There is some rippin’ stuff particularly “Country Blues” (track 5) and some others…

I also wanted to add that Tom Petty, who is one of my heros, has a killer radio show on Sirius on the Deep Tracks channel. I’m only mentioning it because the show is killer and you really get to the bottom of Tom Petty (check out his wikipedia entry). More info here.

Cheers,
Andre

One major, major influence that has so far been missing from the site is…  Soulive!  These guys are so damn sick, three of them, two are brothers…   That’s right, one more “rich” sounding organ trio..  And they’re big, and popular, they play with the likes of Dave Matthews, Ani DiFranco — you name it… Just no one’s heard of them–hopefully until now:

Tunes from their 2001 funky-ass album Doin’ Somethin’ :

Last night was the first time I’d seen them in probably 3 or 4 years. Though it was just a sleepy Tuesday afternoon/evening show, it made my night, possibly my whole week… It’s funny too because even here in Utah, they have a huge following, and out of the wood work a lot of my old friends who were Soulive fans (or fanatics) were there, of course! 

For example my friends the Williams brothers…  Who like Soulive so much they started getting into collecting old Hammond organs, Wurlitzers, Clavinets, etc…  So much so that they’re now the underground kings of the Hammond world here in Utah (if you found this through a search engine and are looking to get a hold of them, email me).  Yes they sell them and even turned it into a little side business for a while..  Not surprisingly I found them talking it up Neil Evans after the show (pictured in the photo below):

Neil Evans on the Hammond B-3, The Clavinet, & playing bass at the same time...

These guys have so much good music and their live stuff is where they really shine. They’re also like Phish where their tried and true glory days (stuff off Phish’s Junta album for example) still holds true, so they keep playing it even though they’ve put out probably 5 or more albums since then.. This is awesome as this old funky stuff is where it’s at…

Here are some videos I took, now on Youtube… Look for a lot more Soulive to come out of this blog and check archive.org for a TON of their live recordings that just kill it.. This is just the tip of the iceberg..

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.

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…

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!

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

“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…

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…

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!

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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…