All posts by Charlie Channel

Everyday is Holy

This is “The Season.”

Peace. That is the cry. She echoes from land to land, order from sand to sand, by woman to man and hand to hand.

The Season exists eternally, but only in those who are free. Those who see no time, to those who need no rhyme, the dove is hard to find among the faithful blind.

This is “The Day.”

RIP:  Joe Cocker.

The love in your muse will be missed.
This is a melody to you: bliss.

 

Villa Serena

My mother-in-law (former Willow Glen resident) now lives at Villa Serena Apartments, an adult living complex for senior citizens.  Sometimes, I have the pleasure of playing with other musicians there.  It’s always wonderful to see the power of music that revives the rhythms of life in those who are slowing down.

Mike Megan and I did a set a few days ago.  Carol, his wife, provided the hat!

Charlie Channel joine me on bass.   (Carol supplied his hat.)

We had a great time playing Christmas tunes.

Charlie and Mike Megan at Villa Serena's Christmas set 12/13/2014
Charlie and Mike Megan at Villa Serena’s Christmas set 12/13/2014

Checked out Joey this Weekend

I went down to Cafe Stritch Saturday evening to experience Joey De Francesco, after playing a gig at the Menlo Park Veterans Administration Hospital under the auspices of Bread and Roses.

I’d never seen Joey perform before, although I’d dug so much of what he’s played.  It was a great experience.  I got to meet Pete Fallico, too and experience the wonderful odor of ozone as he opened the back of the B3, so I could marvel at the vacuum tubes, transformers, capacitors and stuff I hadn’t seen and tinkered with since 1967!  :0).

All I can say is that the Stritch is about as close as one can get to the East Coast scene in NYC on the Peninsula!  It was a great evening.  I hope you get down to the Stritch to experience the Muse, whenever you can.

 

Practice …

This week marks an awareness of my inadequacies.  Perhaps all musicians go through feeling as I do.  It seems there is so much to learn, so much I am not accomplishing in the moment of performance, or even in daily practice.

I am aware that the little things that seemed impossible, only moments ago, will usually proceed to a better level of competency as the future becomes the present. — provided I expend time working on and confronting the failure.

Failure, it seems, must be the goal to strive for every day.  The more failure and the bigger the failures, the more I have to work on and, in the course of so doing, the better I shall become. That is a difficult mind-set to maintain.  My ego tells me that failure reflects on my inadequacy and value as a human being. However, there’s another part of “self” — the objective, above the noise of the crowd part — that tells me, what I’m experiencing is the only way to get to what I’m trying to achieve:  being an accomplished bassist!

I’d have to ask:  Does the need to practice ever stop?  I guess it depends on what one means by “practice.”  Of one thing I’m certain: I’m going to go fail now, once more.

The interesting phenomena is how we connect with our unseen realities.  I commend to you Michael Klinghoffer’s blogging on PERFECTION!