ZCHFS #12 Report (07.11.10)

VIDEO LINK
Note: Fast forward the video and start at the 5:00 minute mark. I kinda hit the "record" button a wee bit early. Oops.

Last weekend was a holiday here in the good ol' US of A, and since July 4 fell on a Sunday, most of the working world was given Monday July 5 off. I tend to work on these kind of days regardless, but Kat had the day off and we spent it mostly relaxing around the house. However, I'm not very good at doing nothing for extended periods of time, so after awhile I took on the task of some rearranging stuff in my office/studio room. After a few trash bags filled and some shoving useless crap in closets, I cleared some space to set up my old keyboard (an Alesis QS8), then plugged it in and was pleasantly surprised to see it still powered up after a few dormant years. The QS8 is a pretty good workhorse of a keyboard, with 88 weighted keys (like a full-size piano) and some good piano and organ sounds. I was a little disappointed that a few of the keys had decided to stop working, but for the most part it was fine.

My piano skills, however, were much more rusty than the keyboard itself. I messed around on it a bit, trying to get the old muscle memory happening. But a couple of days ago, when I was planning Episode 12 of the Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show, a crazy thought popped into my head: could throw in a piano song for the first time in any of my recent performances ("recent" being "for the last 10+ years"). Seriously, the last time I played live piano in public was at a party sometime in the mid-90s, I think, so you have to give me some props just for having the cojones to tickle the ivories at the ZCHFS.

And I'm gonna be hii-iiiiiiiiiigh as a kite by then...

So, after accidentally starting to record my show five minutes before I actually came in and started playing, the show was super fun. I started on piano, switched over to my Martin for a few familiar tunes, whipped out the Cheap Ass Rogue guitar which was set up in D modal tuning for a couple of numbers, and then back to the Martin. I'd intended on finishing there, but my pal NoCal popped in and I had to jump back to piano at the end for a reprise of my Shatner/Elton John song. In fact, here's what I played for Episode 12...

ZCHFS #12 set list...
*Rocket Man (Elton John)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Waiting for This (Zak Claxton)
Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
The Worst (Rolling Stones)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
Space Oddity (David Bowie)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Rocket Man (Elton John)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song.

Strumming my Martin...

... and rocking the cheap guitar too.

It's hard to keep a straight face while covering Shatner covering Elton. It really is.

Thanks to my friends who came by for todays Happy Fun Show! See you again on Saturday July 24!

Rare BIC Lighter Colors

Bow to the glory of my new brown BIC.

Smoking is bad, mmm'kay? Now that we have that part out of the way, may I say, "Whooooo!", for today, my friends, I got a brown BIC lighter.

What had happened was that just earlier in the day, I'd lost my lighter. I had a pretty standard BIC lighter of the black color, and it went missing. I assume it will pop up somewhere, since I didn't go anywhere and they tend not to walk away on their own. I checked my pockets, the patio table, my desk, and basically all around my home. Nada. I haven't looked in the fridge yet, but I didn't intend on waiting until some years from now when I move a piece of furniture for it to pop up. Reinforcements needed to be summoned.

A little after 4PM, feeling the need for some caffeine, I walked across the street to the Bean Counter, where Francesco brewed me up a delicious vanilla latte (my semi frou-frou beverage I occasionally consume in the afternoons). With my delicious drink in hand, I then walked to the cigarette store and surprisingly remembered the predicament of my missing lighter. I usually forget these things until it's too late and the store is closed, and I'm digging through drawers in my kitchen at 11PM hoping to scrounge up a random match.

But I remembered this time, and glanced down at the BIC display on the countertop. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but there, in between the typical mix of black, red, yellow, green, purple, and blue BICs, was something that seemed to exude a more organic vibe. I reached toward it, half expecting it to disappear or scamper off like a mischievous wood sprite, but my hand plucked it from its nest and lo and behold! The elusive brown BIC!

Flame on!

Now that you're thinking that I'm some kind of lighter collector or pyro fetishist or something of that sort, let me assuage you: I'm not very picky about lighters at all. I do tend to use the classic BIC lighter, but I'll usually take any color available that's not particularly obnoxious (though I tend to favor the black, green, and red ones over the blues, purples, or yellows). However, there are certain shades of BICs that seem to come up much less often than others. Brown, in addition to being a lovely natural shade, has also been pretty rare in the BIC product line. I'll always grab them when I see them out there.

More rare BIC colors
In doing a wee bit of research (i.e., googling "rare BIC lighter colors"), I do see that the brown is indeed a talked-about commodity and is appreciated by aficionados of BICs (BICophiles?). From what I can tell, the entire standard current BIC range includes the following:



Black, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, Brown, Pink, Purple. 10 colors. That's it. Now, I know for a fact that there have been others in the past. I recall a delightful beige version, for example, and at least two shapes of gray, medium and charcoal, that I'd love to see again someday. Alas, the non-permanent nature of disposable lighters dictates that when BIC stops making them, they soon vanish off the face of the planet forever. Goodbye, beige and grays! I also recall having seen now-discontinued sky blue and lime green versions, though I can't say I miss them much.

From the current selections, most colors can be found everywhere, except for two: pink and brown. Both of these seem to be produced in much lower quantities than any of the others. Who knows why? Perhaps BIC has sound business reasons for this seemingly odd disparity of lighter hues, but the proof is in the pudding, or rather at the point of sale. You just never seem to see the brown or pink ones. Since I'm not a personal fan of pink (not that there's anything wrong with it), brown is the color that I mostly covet. And today, my friends, the brown is mine.

You might find it interesting to note that the classic BIC Maxi Lighter is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. I find BICs good because they actually do last a long time and tend not to break. And, of course, they're cheap. And, above all, I'm a creature of habit and have been using BICs as long as I've been igniting things, which is a pretty long time now.

So, that's the end of my story. Brown BIC. Happy day.

More radio play! Zak on KSDT (San Diego)!

One kind of fun thing about being an independent musician is that you occasionally don't find out about cool things until way after the fact. It kind of stretches out the cool factor, if you want to think of it that way. For example, since we can't sit here and monitor every radio station in the country 24 hours a day, we rely on occasionally checking published playlists (which not every station has available, of course) to see if I got any radio spins.

Well, today, my darling Kat (who shares duties with me running our little Frothy Music record label) sent me an instant message from work. There was some excited-looking typed gibberish, and then a link. I clicked it, and there was a playlist from KSDT, the indie student radio station out of UC San Diego. Glancing down the list from May 3 (yeah, almost two months ago), there I was! It's the first college radio airplay of my instrumental song "Waxing Gibbous". Yay!

This makes me really happy. I'm imagining some person kicking back on a Monday night in the 11PM hour, perhaps doing some studying in the dorms at UCSD, and chilling to the mellow acoustic guitar vibe of "Gibbous". I hope he or she liked it. Of course, since KSDT sends its sounds out over an Internet stream (like most radio stations these days), it's as likely that a person chilling in Sydney or Saskatoon was listening in as the student in San Diego. In any case, it's made my day.

Looking at the list above, the set I was in gives me some pretty great company. I was played directly after Weather Report, one of the pre-eminent jazz fusion bands in history. The show's set list also included Lole y Manuel, the amazing flamenco duo, with their song "Tu Mira" from the Kill Bill: Volume 2 soundtrack; a tune from Woody Herman who was one of the world's best big band leaders; and finally Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush doing a performance of the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada". Wow! I am loving the eclectic list, and it's a trip to see my name alongside those infinitely more well-known musicians.

By the way: KSDT is a student run station, and is very highly regarded in the world of college and indie radio. It really is an honor just to be played there. Now I have to hurry up and finish this blog post so I can send the DJs some love letters or something.

My high school band: The Goatays

I've never been hesitant to talk about my age. I'm 41 and proud of it. Honestly, I just refuse to take part in a culture that is so youth-oriented to the point that people feel embarrassed about being over 25. It's ridiculous. First, I didn't know shit when I was 25 (as I easily see from my perspective today), so I don't know what's so great about being young. Granted, people tend to look good at that age, but without going off on an ego rampage here, I honestly think I look better (and may be in better shape both physically and mentally) today than I was in the mid-90s. I'm certainly happier now, and I have the advantage of a bunch of experience and knowledge I've gained since then. I've also gained some weight and wrinkles around my eyes and a few gray hairs, but the trade-off is worthwhile.

Why the hell am I talking about this? Well, when I got up this morning, I got a fascinating email from my old friend Michael Gale. Mike and I were bandmates in our high school days and beyond. My very first band was formed while I was still in middle school, but it was more for practice and fun than anything serious. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was already a pretty experienced musician. I also developed friendships with some of the other musicians at school, and at some point our informal jams turned into a real band.

We were all between 16 and 18 years old, with our entire lives ahead of us. It's a fun time of life, when you're figuring out who you are and what you want to be, with all the choices wide open. At that point, in the mid-80s, we definitely hung out with the party crowd in school, and our band became synonymous with the big "ragers", "keggers", or whatever you call a gathering of 200 teenagers getting wasted and hanging out. We started performing at these parties nearly every weekend, calling ourselves The Goatays.

I should probably tell you who was in this band. The leader was our singer, Mike Gale. I call him the leader because we practiced at his house, and he was the one who really booked the gigs and put a personality in front of the band as our lead singer. I was a multiple threat on guitar (mostly rhythm), keyboards, and occasional vocals (backing and lead on a few tunes that were out of Mike's range). Mike Burns was the hotshot lead guitar player, and he was immensely talented for his age. John Simundich handled bass duties. John was a super nice kid at the time. We shared a love for The Police back then. Finally, on drums, we had a guy who was probably my best friend at the time, John Williams. John was the wild card of the band. If he didn't like the song we were doing, he was apt to start throwing drumsticks at Mike and I from his position in back. John liked his alcohol, and it was always a bit of a dice roll in terms of John's moodiness and level of sobriety when we were scheduled to do a show or a practice.

The Gotays in 1984. Left to right: Mike Gale (vocals), John Williams (drums), Zak Claxton (guitar/keys), John Simundich (bass), Mike Burns (guitar). Yes, I think I weighed 130 pounds at that point. I'm still the same height and about 40 pounds heavier now. Time happens. Photo courtesy of Mike Gale.

The band didn't have a long half-life. We started it when Mike and I were in 11th grade, and it burned out when we all went our mostly separate ways to start college and life beyond. Really, it was only from 1984-1986 that The Goatays flourished. But what a couple of years it was! Afterwards, as time went by, Mike and I would form other bands, wrote and recorded a lot of songs together, and would also go on to do lots of musical activities apart from each other. But because of our ubiquitousness in that magical period of the '80s, there are literally hundreds of people for whom their cherished memories of those days include the sound of us blasting our way through cover songs by the Doors, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, the Cars, the Police, the Stones, Pink Floyd and the like.

Another pic from the garage where we practiced and partied. In back, you can see the Marshall amplifiers (one black, one red) that Mike Burns and I bought on the same day. Photo courtesy of Mike Gale.

All very interesting, right? But again, you ask yourself, "Why is Zak writing about this?" Especially considering the fact that I'm not a person who looks back very much (too much happening now to be focused on the past), it's not often I regale you with stories from several decades ago.

A rare pic of us playing live, this time on the lawn of our high school. That's me out in front with my white Stratocaster, taking a guitar solo. Photo courtesy of Mike Gale.

As I mentioned earlier, I got up today to find an email from Mike Gale in my inbox. Mike and I have stayed in touch and remained close over the years, though our lives with our respective careers and families (and distance between us) have had us doing our own things for a number of years. But Mike has recently heard from the guy who is putting together my high school's Class in 1986 25-year reunion, scheduled for summer 2011. And the guy had an idea: a Goatays reunion show at the class reunion.

Well. That was unexpected, to say the least. My first thought was that it would be hard to bring us together. John Simundich, the bass player, had moved to Hawaii shortly after high school. The two Mikes, Burns and Gale, both have family and work obligations that are as strenuous as my own. And John Williams, the drummer, had fallen off the face of the Earth, apparently. The first indication that this might actually be feasible was that John S. had said that if we got the other guys involved, he'd fly in from Hawaii for the gig. The next step was Mike G.'s enthusiasm that we really try and get this rolling.

As of the time of this writing, they are trying to get Mike Burns to agree to the plan. Mike, like me, has continued with his career in music. Also like me, he's had a busy dual life in his work in software design, but he's been involved in film scoring and movie producing since then. I'll bet that he's into it, and I let them know that if Burns was in, I was in.

The one part of this completely out-of-the-blue reunion plan that will most likely not happen is the participation of our original drummer. While I'd love to see John W. again, it would seem that his life has not been easy since those days. Stories I've heard from mutual pals paint a pretty grim picture, and regardless, none of us are able to get in contact with him. So, it's already been determined that without John, another friend (and bandmate for many years), Danny Silva, would be filling in at the drummer's throne.

It's been fun, just having a reason to think about those days. I'm no fan of nostalgia; truth be told, while I did go to the 20-year reunion in 2006 and had fun, it's likely I would not have gone to next year's shindig without this Goatays reunion in the works. But I find that looking back on my days as a young musician, enjoying the camaraderie and creativity in a group setting for the first time, brings back more good than bad memories. Many more.

So, that's it for now. If all goes well, in Summer 2011, the Goatays will take the stage for the first time in 25 years. I, for one, think it might be really cool.

Molaskey's Pub (06.28.10)

I tell you... there's something about Molaskey's Pub. Maybe it's the fact that the owners (Apple MacKay and Katydid Something) are such real music fans. Maybe it's the build... a gorgeous beachside setting with the stage on a platform on the water. I don't know what it is, but I always feel inspired to play really well there.

I take a breather after my show at Molaskey's while listening to Frets Nirvana.

And I'll also tell you: I've been on a roll lately. The last few shows, I don't think my singing or guitar/harmonica playing gets much better. I discussed this with Kat the other night: how I wish that I could define the circumstances around being able to do a good performance (as to be able to repeat them with them same results). But much like an athlete, a performing musician has good nights and bad nights, and there's not usually any one thing you can point to that makes it better or worse. Anyway, the last few shows have been great, so hopefully whatever I'm doing, I keep doing it.

Anyway, back to Molaskey's. Enjoyed the show very much as usual, and the hosts were as cool as I remembered. Good times! I also did a pretty laid-back set that I felt would be good for the vibe there. It was.

Today's set list...
I've Been Waiting for You (Neil Young)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Fire & Rain (James Taylor)
California (Joni Mitchell)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
Time Never Waits for You (Zak Claxton)
Better Man (Pearl Jam)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
After the Goldrush (Neil Young)
Jane (Barenaked Ladies)

Big thanks to everyone who supported my show today at Molaskey's Pub!
Hiro Pendragon, Chestnut Rau, Aurelie Chenaux, Kat Claxton, fabio Greybeard, Alexis Fairlady, and the terrific hosts Mia Kitchensink, Katydid Something, and Apple MacKay!

Triana's Music Trivia (06.27.10)

Today was the five-year anniversary of Triana's Music Trivia, which is the longest-running trivia game in Second Life. For those of you who haven't known me long or very well, I'll tell you a quick story: Triana is one of Kat and my closest friends in SL. Since we met her in 2006, Kat and I have spent nearly every Sunday evening at her trivia game, being there more for the fun and friendship than anything. Triana has also hung out with Kat and I in the real world as well; twice, she's flown out to our home in the Los Angeles area from the Midwest to spend time with us in person. She's a great person and I've been all too happy to perform at several special events at her trivia night over the years.

First, let's see some pics. This post is worthless without pics.

Rocking next to the giant "5" on Triana's roof.

Triana and friends dance while I softly rock them with soft rock.

One of NoCal's many avvies sits on a corner of my stage.

The traditional mob at the end of a Sunday night. Here's Kat, Alchemy, me, Triana, and Nakira on the Big 5.

With it being the five-year celebration, I tried to put together a really unique set list, with at least one song I'd never played before and a few rarities from deep in the bag of tunes. The show felt good and I had a good time, so I'm happy to offer the whole thing for your listening pleasure.... listen to the entire show now! (57.3MB)

Triana's Music Trivia 5-year Anniversary Set List...
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
†While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Beatles)
Fade Away (Zak Claxton)
Triana (Zak Claxton)
The Weight (The Band)
Mary Jane's Last Dance (Tom Petty)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
*The Rainbow Connection (Kermit the Frog)
Shine (Zak Claxton)
†Edith and the Kingpin (Joni Mitchell)
Lines on Your Eyes (Zak Claxton)
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)

*First time I've ever performed this song, in SL or anywhere
†Last performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps": September 20, 2008
†Last performance of "Edith and the Kingpin": May 2, 2009

Giant thanks to all of our great friends at TMT, including the following ones who supported my show!
Charriol Ansar, Alchemy Epstein, Nakira Tennen, FreakAngel Constantine, Rey Tardis, Samantha Poindexter, MrNoCal Honey, Kat Claxton, Diana Renoir, Jordan Hazlitt, Xerxes Ninetails, and the gal who makes it all happen week after week, Triana Caldera!

ZCHFS #11 Report (06.26.10)

VIDEO LINK

We did the 11th episode of the Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show on Saturday, and it was entirely happy and fun. My bad: I kind of forgot to tell people about this show until the last minute, which is a good way to ensure that as few people as possible turn up at the show, heh heh. But we had a cool crew of people there, and it was terrific to once again pull out the new Cheap Ass Guitar that was already pre-tuned to a crazy Joni Mitchell tuning, allowing me to do a couple of rare songs that I normally avoid due to the tuning issues.

Oh honey, come here to me...

Zak's drinking problem.

ZCHFS #11 Set List...
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Summer Breeze (Seals & Crofts)
Time Never Waits for You (Zak Claxton)
Old Man (Neil Young)
†Just LIke This Train (Joni Mitchell)
Coyote (Joni Mitchell)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Shine (Zak Claxton)
Things Behind the Sun (Nick Drake)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
Come Around (Zak Claxton)

†Last performance of "Just Like This Train" was September 27, 2008

Thanks to my terrific friends and fans who came out to watch the show! Next ZCHFS is on Saturday July 10! See you there!