Tommy Emmanuel is one of the best guitar players of our time. I had heard of his name mentioned to me a couple of times by my uncle who is a guitar instructor, but not until my friend Karta mentioned his name again that I became interested in his music and his guitar playing style. Tommy’s slick finger-picking style is heavily influenced by Chet Atkins, who in turn is heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt. If you have never seen him play before you would have thought that there’s no way he plays the guitar all by himself. In almost all of his songs it’s as if he’s playing bass, rhythm and melody guitars all at the same time. But that’s not all, his fingers are blazing fast and accurate. I have never seen him play off note, not even once, during his live performances. The way his note sounds is so lively and full of soul as if his one guitar is a three-piece choir singing beautifully. If you’re still not sold yet, Tommy is also a great entertainer. See for yourselves. The smiles, thundering applause, and amazement from the audience at the end of his every song is a good indicator of how this Aussie bloke is really down-to-earth and can connect with his audience during his performances.

I’ve had a great privilege to watch him perform live last night here in Melbourne, which he calls his hometown, along with some of his friends who are great guitar players and entertainers themselves. The show has really exceeded my expectations, my friends and I had a really great time last night at his show, TommyFEST. Jake Shimabukuro is a young, fifth-generation Japanese-American ukulele player from Hawaii, which Tommy knew from watching his YouTube videos and later on met in Austin, Texas. I had actually watched Jake’s infamous video on YouTube a few months ago, and I was a bit surprised when I saw his name in the TommyFEST poster. Originally I thought Jake is just some kid who plays some ukulele (or as Tommy calls it: “a four-string weapon of mass construction”) and posted his video on YouTube. But he is really talented and he has some really good stuff too. He played George Harrison’s “My Guitar Gently Weeps” together with Tommy and it was awesome to see. Jake’s a bit too intense at times for my taste though, but he’s still really good.

The fact that Jake was “discovered” by Tommy from YouTube is interesting. It shows the potential that user-provided content sites like YouTube, Flickr, etc. has to offer for indie artists, making traditional record labels and publishers almost irrelevant in the not-so-distant future. So maybe Google really sees some potential in YouTube that some of us don’t see, some potential worth $1.65 billion.

Anyway, back to TommyFEST. Along with Jake, Tommy brought Martin Taylor, a British jazz guitarist which became friends with Tommy since Tommy moved to England in 1998. Martin actually comes to Australia to perform quite regulary. After his first song, I thought to myself, “Oh great, here comes the boring guy,” but, boy, was I wrong. Martin, like Tommy, has played guitar since he was a 4-year old boy, and he is really talented and a great entertainer that can connect with his audience just like Tommy. We can immediately tell afterwards by his use of humour throughout his songs and dialogs throughout his performance. Later on Tommy joined Martin to play a few songs. It was amazing to see two guitar giants jam together playfully, like watching two best friends drinking beer on a lazy sunday afternoon, having a great conversation.

After a short intermission, Tommy played one more song and introduced a trio from Germany, the Joscho Stephan trio. Joscho is a young but very talented guitar player from Munich, he is accompanied by Max Schaaf a bass player from Köln and Joscho’s dad, Günter Stephan on rhythm guitar. Joscho’s gypsy style guitar playing immediately reminds me of Django Reinhardt. They indeed played some of their own songs dedicated to Django, and some of Django’s songs like Nuages. Joscho’s fingers are as blazing fast as Tommy’s, it really blew me away. I was in awe and really enjoying their performance at the same time. After a few songs, Tommy joined them and shows us how versatile he can be. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised because Tommy is also indirectly influenced by Django.

At the end of the 3-hour show, Martin and Jake joined Tommy and the Joscho Stephan trio for a few songs. I was mesmerized the whole time. It was amazing to see how much energy these guitar players have after performing on stage for that long. You’d know what I mean if you ever played fast finger-picking style for just 10 minutes. Maybe they get adrenaline rush when they perform on stage in front of more than 800 people. They all–except Jake–came back on stage for an encore after their last performance to play one more song.

Last night was really great, we all had a great time, and it was the best $60 I have ever spent in my life.

Speaking about Django, about two months ago I started looking at the Django framework which is similar to Ruby on Rails (but contrary to popular beliefs Django actually started before Rails). I like Rails but I think now I like Django more. Somehow it feels cleaner and makes more sense to me. Besides, Python seems more mature compared to Ruby, has a native Unicode support (unlike Ruby) and tons of “built-in” libraries. Django somehow feels easier to install and get running in Ubuntu Dapper compared to Rails (flame away!). The documentation is awesome, and the people in the mailing list are helpful yet friendly. If you have never tried these MVC-style frameworks, I recommend checking out Django and Rails. Now, if only I can convince my dev team at work to use Django for our next project…

The Django framework is named after Django Reinhardt by its creator. It’s a little bit funny how recently several things and events in my life seems to have common reference to Django Reinhardt.

Total volume of music on my computer

18 GB — 3,596 songs, 11 days, 3 hours and 6 minutes.

Last CD I bought

“Perjalanan Panjang” by Jikustik.

Song currently playing

“Trail Blazer” by Acoustic Alchemy.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me

Now, this is a challenge. Pick five out of 3,596, yes! I’m going to make it more than five. Sue me.

These are the songs that mean a lot to me:

• “You Never Know” by Jim Brickman and Boney James
• “Above All” by Michael W. Smith
• “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for” by U2
• “Heaven” by Live
• “For the Rest of My Life” by Nelson Rangell
• “Tak Bisa ke Lain Hati” by KLa Project
• “It Never Entered My Mind” by Miles Davis
• “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” by Sting
• “You Don’t Love Me” by The Philosopher Kings
• “Romance d’Amour” (classical Spanish song), this is the first complete song that I could play a guitar with.

These are the songs that I play a lot lately:

• “This is Such A Pity” by Weezer
• “Feel Good, Inc.” by Gorillaz
• “Lonely No More” by Rob Thomas
• “Give a Little Bit” by Goo Goo Dolls (I like the original Supertramp version, too.)
• “Someday, Someday” by Thirsty Merc

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton

It wouldn’t be fun to pass this to only five people. So if you read this then you’re welcome to post your own. Make sure to trackback here. Have fun!

The latest album from Acoustic Alchemy, “American/English”, was recently released on 29 March 2005. The band’s biography page on their website has some interesting insights about the latest as well as their prior albums, such as this below paragraph:

“Our last album (2003’s Radio Contact) was a bit of a step backwards,” says band manager Stewart Coxhead. “The Beautiful Game and AArt both took the music in very different directions than we had explored in the past, but for Radio Contact we stepped back a bit and did something more familiar. On American/English we realized that the music had to move forward, so the band took some chances and tried some new sounds and ideas.” However, rather than indulging in the piano, keyboard, and horn lines that played prominently in The Beautiful Game and AArt, American/English finds the band using those instruments as textural accompaniments, setting up dramatic surroundings for the dual nylon and steel string guitars that have defined Acoustic Alchemy since the band’s inception two decades ago.

Acoustic Alchemy was originally founded by Nick Webb and Simon Jones, both from England, in the 1980′s. Later on the formation became Nick Webb and Greg Carmichael, which was the formation that were popular and well-known by many people. They released their debut album “Red Dust & Spanish Lace” in 1987. From the beginning their signature has always been the two guitars, and their music is commonly classified as adult contemporary, employing a range of musical flavours from jazz, latin, soft pop and new age. Their 1990 album “Reference Point” was nominated for a Grammy award. Nick Webb passed away from battle with cancer in 1998. Greg Carmichael carried on with Acoustic Alchemy with new members as well as longtime supporting musicians.

(Compiled from Acoustic Alchemy’s website and All Music Guide.)