Well in so many words I thought I would explain somewhat of a breakthrough I recently came to.   It’s basically coming up with a term for a lot of the stuff I do (and have been doing for several years) as a hobby, called “dirtbag adventuring.”  I’ve been struggling for several years to build and define a name for it because it sort of represents a lot of the stuff I’m into, metal fabrication and welding, exploring and adventuring, mountain bike riding and tele skiing, etc. Could it all fit into one place? Oddly in my eyes it does and always has, and I was always sort of looking for a place that represented this. A place with “soul.”

Here is some of the stuff I wrote about the site as I started pimping it on misc boards:

Hi guys,
I thought I’d refer some of my friends from Mud over to a newish community I started called “Hazard Assembly” – Hazard Assembly – The Ultimate Place for Dirtbag Adventuring. It is more oriented towards the guy who sort of does all sorts of adventures so the cruiser is sort of “the tool” rather than the being and the idea is we’ll have skiers and kayakers and MTBers and ideally lots of good times. It’s sort of eco focused to an extent and is really about just having a good time. I figure as the site takes off we should start seeing some really good stories and interesting or hopefully riveting adventures… The irony is we probably have about a couple dozen cruiserheads there already. The whole site is on an old New Mexico license plate… I’ve met a lot of you at particularly Cruise Moab, guys like Beno . I figured it would be right up the alley of a bunch of us…

Hazard Assembly – The Ultimate Place for Dirtbag Adventuring

We also have a gear giveaway going on. Post in this thread.

Cheers, Andre

And here is some misc Hazard Assembly photostream. A little bit of everything…

What is a TBIC site?

Hazard Assembly is the first of a few sites I plan to develop called “TBIC” sites, short for “topic by Internet Community.” It’s basically a publishing platform powered by lots of people, not just a few.  In the case of Hazard Assembly, it is simply a blog that has several users, but the community provides the bulk of the data.  In the long term TBIC will be a software platform that extracts quality data for publishing.

Look for more updates about this as I get some time. My hobby, ‘dirtbag adventurings… ‘ www.hazardassembly.com.

In Comb Wash, where they found Everett Ruess

Also RIP Michael Jackson, devastating because I liked his music so much. It did shape my life and the music here, sort of as the ‘first taste.’ I played that album from when I could work the record player (3 or 4 maybe?) all the way through college, wearing the grooves through the vinyl… I feel he is in a better place as he was sick physically and mentally to have become the person he was. Sad to see him go…

Normally I don’t dork around enough to really care too much about different editions of wordpress and different software (and particularly blogging software).  Since I became a convert to wordpress some time in 2008 I’ve sort of seen the light though and how totally awesome this little piece of blogging software is.  I also use it in all sorts of applications so it really is pretty neat.

Anyway, Wordpress 2.8 is here and the best way to sort of highlight it and what it is and how the back end works (and all the new features) is to post their video about it. I’ve already updated easily 50% of the sites I have running Wordpress with it (and it takes about 2 seconds to do, which is another nice feature of it).  Even on a complicated site like www.hazardassembly.com, with all sorts of crazy plugins (for example the site’s entire login feature is powered by vbulletin for example off a completely different database) it upgraded flawlessly and effortlessly.

Here is the video explaining it all.  For the tech geeks out there, enjoy!

This afternoon as I’m banging away on a web project, I had Breakestra playing once again.  There are quite a few more tracks than what I’d originally posted so I thought I would post them up on the old post.   HERE IS THE LINK TO THE OLD POST ON THIS SITE.   Click it to listen to these newly added tracks…

Yeah. ..  that’s what I’m talking about.  Check out the track with Charlie Tuna from J-5!

I thought I would start playing from some of the archive of live Herbie Hancock recordings I’ve been somehow acquiring and saving for some time….

“Peace and Love” as my friend Ara says… (hit play)

This is a pretty killer recording of Jaco Pastorious sitting in with Herbie Hancock quintet in 1977 at the Ivanhoe Theatre in New York. At first I thought I’d just play a couple of my favorite songs but I thought that wouldn’t be fair for the folks who haven’t heard it before, as this is rare but not “that” rare… Instead I staggered the order as Track 2 and particularly track 3 – It Remains to Be Seen, are some of my favorites. In typical fashion this track came on my ipod on the way home tonight from the shop and it just cranks, so here I am playing it — no rhyme or reason I suppose (smile).

Also — and this is important — now, here I was, thinking I was something special with some of these rare tracks. But as I was looking online for both the playlist and some art for this bootleg (or “import” as they were once called), out of the wood work I found some blogs way older than this one, including **holy gold mine** – very cool, make sure you click that link. In this single post there are 44 great bootlegs — many of which I don’t even own. And look at the lineup, Roy Ayers (trust me – there is some Roy Ayers coming) and a gazillion others… It’s so good that I added his blog to the blog roll on the right and it will take be days to get through it all, and to even get a good beginning…

Here is some art from this blog & this post. There is something about the covers of early 70s recordings, again just keepin it real…

I have seen these guys play a couple times and they are pretty killer… In a couple weeks is the Desert Rocks Music Festival and they are playing a complete Herbie Hancock set. How sick is that…

To get you guys pumped listen to how tight their band is and their music skills. A couple youtube vids…

Check out how sick their keys player is…

In really no musical order I started playing some Chick Corea, Return to Forever, and even a little of Tower of Power tonight. I thought I would play some random, favorite songs of these guys for you… Be forwarned that at least the first song is a hair weird but man is it tight and funky…

The first song is a total rando as I like a lot of Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock and this is about one of the farthest I would normally think to play, right off the back. But I thought I’d throw it on mostly on the tightness of all of the players, and it reminds me of good funky diverse later Chick that really heavily lied on their unbelievable drummers… Carrie says it reminds her of the music of a musical. I definitely see that…

This song was off Corea’s 1978 album the Mad Hatter. Definitely a little later and a little weirder. As sick as he is I think that Scientology had a force in it, thought I learned his sick bass player Stanley Clarke did a lot with the song naming (especially the ones he wrote, the Sorcerer, etc) – stuff seemingly right out of Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, dorky, I know… He was and is and always will be pretty popular in Japan as well, interestingly enough…

The Funky Chick Corea -- Early 70's

This photo above is more along the lines of the Corea I know and like. A little more traditional and a little more jazzy, and Latin and even Brazilian influenced. I know it’s hard to listen to some of this stuff on the internet and get the good vibes out of it, particularly if you’re at work at something, but I will say that this is a good goose-bump-yielding song… It is also one of the cleanest and most soulful playings of the Fender Rhodes I think I may have even ever heard — and believe me I’ve searched out this music… This is the famous “RTF” (Return to Forever — his band) albums out there, before they went a little more electronic; man is it good…

Return to Forever

This next song, Shadow of Lo, is one that on the album is a little cheesy but there is something about it. I particularly like this live version though, something that is a little more soulful and you can hear them all get down. This is slightly later, about 70’s playing as they are clearly all electronic here and this is when Corea was messing around heavily with pitch bending — an acquired taste. For this reason, along with the reasons for song #1, I give this post definitely the “weird music” label, and sorry, but it is good stuff if you ask me!

__________________

But finally…

Tower of Power -- look as some of the shades and hair dos...

I thought you guys would dig this. Way more funky, way more main stream. This was mid 70’s. And we’re still having the same discussions…

It’s better to tell these stories with the tunes playing, so hit play…

A lot of the music that goes down in our lives happens down at our shop at the Recycling Center in Heber City, Utah, where we spend a lot of time working on old Toyota Land Cruisers and other misc vehicles and doing all sorts of interesting work, modifications, engine swaps, modernization, and other crazy fabrication. We’re down there for hours and hours upon a time and the music is very loud and the music is sort of the soul of our time and essence down there and it makes it really enjoyable. We have a pretty sick old stereo, interestingly the same old stereo I’ve had all the way since high school and some parts (the receiver) since middle school. It is an old school something like 400 watt JVC from the early days of compact disks back when their players were called “DADs” or “digital audio devices.” I bought it from my friend Sam Speigel for $25 in I think 8th or 9th grade, who is now a famous DJ and music producer in L.A. I’m sure he’d be psyched to know I’m rockin’ it… Through out the night we basically just turn it up and last night we found ourselves listening to this album, “Secrets,” the famous old album by Herbie Hancock from about 1974, so I thought I would post it, in its entirety… This is the album that followed the Head Hunters’ famous self titled album with Chameleon. My best interpretation of it is they really progressed heavily from the Head Hunters album. Herbie also had a lot of new, neat interesting toys that were coming out at the time and was getting really good at using them. For example a machine/synthesizer called an Arp Odyssey and a few others. The line of what he plays, from the album cover, back when we actually possessed and read album covers (it really is a shame) is pretty good. Secrets to me is a way more advanced read. Simple and tuned down, a little more poppy and catchy-er. But it also wasn’t new like Head Hunters so this is why Head Hunters was always a good selling album. Whereas I remember the first time I bought this album (its been several times, LOL) I remember it in the discount bin for $8 in Tower Records at the bottom of Central Park in New York. Here is the album cover…

Herbie Hancock Secrets

I think this picture says a lot about Herbie and sort of the era there. If you look at photos of Herbie these days you’ll see he is pretty sharp and clean cut. And that really about-describes Herbie and who he is, a piano prodigy by the age of 10, classically trained, with a degree in electrical engineering (the stuff that people who make microchips are made of).

But back then (maybe look at the photo again) Herbie was rough and tumble, I think feeling the soul and living life differently. Sort of looking worn, but if you ask me, in a good way. Living the dream, probably on the road heavily and generally being a musician and a heavy musician and a funky/trippy musician. Nothing was proven for him. He had a pretty good run if you ask me, born in 1940 so through the late 60s, when the country was in pretty bad turnoil, he was in his late 20s playing the piano for Miles Davis who put out Bitches Brew which was the first album of this sort (way rougher – according to me) in 1968 and welcome to the world of this sort of music. Herbie then branched out and became part of the “Miles Davis alum” who are about 3 or 4 musicians from his band that put out all the leading music of this time. If this sounds familiar or if you think you’ve read this story on this site before you’re correct because I’ve told it a few times. By 1972, again, just like the mantra of this site spells out, the old school jazz and bebop movement was largely dead with the rising shortly-lived popularity of avant-garde jazz music and the increasing popularity of increasingly complicated rock music, such as the progressive rock band Yes, and even the Beatles. It wasn’t too odd by then, I figure (though I wouldn’t have been born until 6 years later) to see Yes and the My Favorite Things album occupying the same milk crate. So the interesting thing is that this is probably when it really mattered to Herbie, he had a good past that he could ride out, but so did his competition like Miles Davis Guitar Player John Mclaughlin who beat him to the punch with this killer album (earlier post on this site). Herbie really had no idea what the outcome would be and what his future would be, he had no idea he would go on to basically always have and audience and put out god-knows how many grammy-winning albums.

Down at the shop I was going to say that our environment is sort of “young” and I realized that I’ve been really clinging onto our “twenties” possibly as a method that I believe I “appeal” to young people, college kids etc. I was going to say “we’re all a bunch of 20-somethings” but I realized that as of last November when I turned 30, in fact none of us are 20-something now. It’s also funny for me to think of myself as the youngest guy in the shop as well. The good news is we’re all at least pretty “mentally” young. Bill is a pretty hardcore adventurer. His facebook profile picture is a bumper sticker that reads “My vacation is your worst nightmare.” Right on Bill! Scotty and I, I feel like, are tremendously close these days mostly revolving around life at the shop. He has this absolutely bitchen’ old 4WD ‘77 Dodge Van that he bought for $500 that he is souping up to be a sweet lean mean shaggin’ machine in true 70’s style (and bare min it has a bar and tons of shag carpeting to be installed). He’s been doing tons of bondo and fiberglass (and minimal rust work as its just too far gone) to make it a fun-ass vehicle to drive till its death, put a month of work into and get a good 5-10 years of ever-rotting enjoyment until it finally dies. His goals this year are bare min, the Desert Rocks Music Festival (in Moab Utah in just over a month – gulp!) and Burning Man. How sick is that.

Scotty Ray's Mean, Bitchen '77 4WD Dodge Van

The story of the shop is pretty neat. I was fresh out of college and took on my first attempt at doing something “crazy!” with a vehicle: restoring an old ‘71 Toyota Land Cruiser. I managed to kill the furnace in the garage of the house I was living in, from removing literally pounds of bondo dust from the 30-year-old vehicle. So after that of course, I needed to move operations… My neighbor had a bay in a shop he owned down in Heber City so I ended up down there. A couple years later I became good friends with a new transplant to here in Park City Utah from Kentucky named Damon Leake and maybe a year later we ended up sharing the shop. One year after that I was recycling one day down there and I met Dirk Spangenberg, the owner of Curb It Recycling, and we ended up moving into his larger shop on the rear side of his facility. One after that our friends Scott Ray (also from Kentucky originally, one of Damon’s good friends from home who is just awesome) and our friend Bill Hartlieb who I met through the world of biodoesel and waste vegetable oil, have also moved in. We have a pretty good environment where its a lot of fun and we do a hell of a job pooling tools and resources and have a lot of fun, really with I think all of ours only complaint being a lack of cleanliness and too much clutter unfortunately.. We’ve done some pretty neat things. At least two full diesel engine conversions, some WVO conversions, several major rust removal projects, a full motorcycle restoration, countless suspensions installed, fabrication of potato guns and bicycles, and absolutely huge amounts of fabrication in general – definitely a fun place to be… I’m liking it so much these days that somewhere in the cue of fun things to do will be to make a fun blog page/site for the shop for the 4 of us where we constantly update all the fun stuff we’re doing…

This all leads me to last night where Scotty, who’s really into the Jam Band scene and all the bands from there (and I’m sort of into a lot of those guys too) are listening to the album you’re listening to right now. This era of Herbie Hancock was probably cranked in thousands and pot-smoke-filled vans through the 70s and everyone knows who Herbie Hancock is but I find not a lot of people have listened to his tunes… I think we were both likening it to a lot of the music we’re going to see down in a month and a half at Desert Rocks, but I described it to him as “real early – 1973. You have to imaging a room full of the darkest soul brothas just getting down and funky. Listen to the congas!” I did point out that there was a white guy with an afro in the band though. Mike something-aruther, who was the drummer… Cool, funky stuff… Scotty was down….

If you’re done with the tunes and want to get a visual of it all. I believe I’ve posted this earlier on this blog but here is a good 17 minute (you can skip through it of course) video of Herbie playing “Chameleon” from his famous Head Hunters album which was the one that lead to this album. I hope you enjoyed this…

Cheers,
Andre

Herbie Hancock – Chameleon Live 1974 from Andre Shoumatoff on Vimeo.

In typical format I was just cruisin’ along the other day and low and behold Delta Nove’s latest album ‘the future is when’ comes on my iPod and it is just crankin.’ I’m not really sure why I remembered their album isn’t “polished” as these three songs just kill it. Track 1 is an intro for Track 2 which is just a killer song.. Track 3 sort of shows some of their diversity and ability to throw up some killer songs… And again, that Brazilian flair. You should hear the whole album. It is really, really Brazilian. Again for friends, I have a few extras copies of it from when they played at Club Suede a few years ago who’s website I managed before they were forced out of business by the Utah DABC for “excessive liquor violations” (hehem hehem loudly — the state of Utah put them out of business on purpose – it is really messed up).

Anyway, enjoy. These guys just rip…

I thought I’d do some recollection on a band we’ve seen a couple times now called Delta Nove from Long Beach, California. Live recording from 2006 (details below):

Mostly testament to the despicable music industry (as it really is sad – so many good artists and such utter crap on the radios most of the time), I’d bet, being that these guys are from Long Beach, that many a record label guy has seen them play live. When I first saw them, at 2006 Desert Rocks Music Festival in Moab, these guys just killed it.

According to me, of the 20-something bands that played that festival, they were definitely the best out of the whole damn festival. Fresh, diverse, basically looked like complete and utter rock stars. Some sick Brazilian Samba flair. That, and they are just killer live performing artists.

I have a couple of their albums but I hate to say it, the albums according to me sort of lack that ‘polished album flair” where maybe someone like Rick Rubin says, “play that rip 8 beats longer” and “turn down the distortion on this measure but come back harder next rif..” Things like that. So admittedly their (at least this album) “The Future is When?” recording is a little bland. What happens when you’re self produced. That said, I have maybe 3 or 4 extra copies of it brand new in the wrapper, if anyone local wants one (or shit, shoot me an email, I’ll mail it) let me know. And they’re still pretty good.

But because of this, I’m going to play a live recording of theirs from 2006 from sounds like their resident location off of archive.org called The Blue Cafe in Long Beach. This is a killer recording, probably one of many…

By the way, did I mention that archive.org rules? Here is the link to the recording if you want to download it (for free). Choose your format. FLAC is really high quality but a bitch to deal with (at least for me) over MP3 so I download MP3.

Enjoy!

By the way, this post goes out to all my children… (Really, I don’t think I have any children, except for maybe Rebecca, though she’s a couple years older than me)…