Tuba Skinny

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20s, 30s, authentic, band, classically, cornet, created, decade, drum, energy, erika lewis, folk, fun, genre, hot, hot jazz, immersed, jazz, listen, listening, music, musician, new orleans, night, original, piano, player, popular, screen, Shaye Cohn, singer, street, style, syncopated, time, trained, tuba, tuba fats, tuba skinny, tune, washboard, watch, youtube

I was up late the other night listening to a band on YouTube called Tuba Skinny from New Orleans. I could not stop listening. These are young folks that can really capture the hot jazz sounds 20s and 30s. Singer, Erika Lewis (also bass drum), is particularly interesting. With a style and approach that is strikingly authentic and true to the style, Lewis seems as if she is somewhere else deep in the music. The group often plays on the streets of New Orleans, where the band originated and can range in size. No matter the size, they play very hot jazz with no music in front of them. They have an energy that can only come from young folks who are immersed in this genre of music. Turn off the colour on your screen and the band looks as if it is back in time, back when their music was just being created for the first time.

Cornet player Shaye Cohn is classically trained in piano, however took up the cornet to play this music. I find that most classically trained musicians don’t usually play with a hot syncopated style. I have found it rare, however that is not the case with anyone in the Tuba Skinny band, despite how any of them may have been trained. The washboard player is truly interesting to watch.

Tuba Skinny takes its name in recognition of a popular New Orlean tuba player, Tuba Fats, who passed away just before the band formed in 2009. Initially, the band was a collection of street musicians, however, in the less than a decade of existence, it quickly garnered great attention as a unique and authentic sounding jazz band that now travels extensively. YouTube is full of great Tuba Skinny videos. While they do many popular tunes, most of gathered from lesser known sources and some are originals. This band is well worth a listen and fun to watch.

Tuba Skinny

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Jazz videos

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1957, artistic, band, Billie holiday, blues, cables, camera, chicago, classic, crane, jazz, Kansas city, musicians, TV, tv show, youtube

The other day, I ran across a video I had not seen for years of Billie Holiday on a TV show with a band of the greatest. It is a real classic, but is only part of a full hour-long TV show from 1957. It never occurred to me to go look for the entire show. So, tonight I did and what a treasure. The Holiday part is somewhere in the middle.

It is a great intersection of jazz and blues and the vehicles bring elements of many types of jazz and blues from so many eras going back to the beginnings. There is a heavy leaning on the Kansas City and Chicago styles. I particularly like the way the cameras caught the musicians at their best, both playing and enjoying each other playing and from very artistic angles. Keep in mind, the cameras in those early days were huge bulky things on wheels and shots from above were done with cameras on special cranes. The equipment was not easily moved around for various shots and the cables must have been huge too. It doesn’t get much better than this from 1957.

Note: There are a couple of versions on YouTube. I chose one that has an extra segment on the end.

Copyright Bots

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apple iTunes, blocked, bot, bots, content, copyright, digital age, download, first lady, flagging, government, hackers, hoopla, hugo awards, information, infringement, internet, law, legitimate, malicious, michelle obama, movie, music, napster, password, permission, personal, phone, recognize, ringtone, robot, share, snippets, source, stream, streamed, technical, upload, ustream, video, written, youtube

Recently, I received a notice from my Internet provider that someone in my household had downloaded a movie that was copyrighted. It was a pretty long and detailed message full of technical information that immediately indicated to me that it was automatically created. Then, I realized that, of course, this could easily be done.

Just as hackers create malicious small software programs that can sit somewhere and watch for particular information, such as passwords, bots, as they are called, could do the same to watch for copyright infringement. This is exactly what happens.

A bot, is like a robot, however it is really software; a small program that does a very small task like watch for certain information. When it finds something, it forwards it to whoever is waiting for the information. In the case of a hacker, it might be some of your personal information. Thus, it seems simple that bots could be programmed to watch for copyright infringement. Simple, right? Not really.

A quick search on the Internet reveals that these bots are getting it wrong quite often. It appears that verifying the use of copyrighted material is not as easy as it might seem. Bots have been known to shut down video feeds on YouTube and Ustream—even a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Here is one of the problems. Content is uploaded to the Internet. That content might contain something that was taken from some other content. If this is written, providing the source is usually good enough, unless a large portion is being used, then it is best to get permission.

What is happening now is that bots are recognizing snippets of music, for example, in a video and flagging it as copyright infringement—even though the snippet is not really part of the video, or intentionally added. It might just be a ringtone on a phone in the background. Usually, the result is a message that goes out to make sure the material is taken down.

The bot can cause huge problems when the material it finds is being streamed live, as in the case with Michelle Obama and with the Hugo Awards. In these cases, the stream was immediately blocked creating quite a hoopla of complaints.

Copyright issues in this digital age have been a huge problem. Laws have lagged behind technology leaving copyright owners unable to control their material. Digital files are easily copied and shared. For years, services have come and gone that facilitated the sharing of digital copyrighted content. Napster was one that created a stir over music sharing. Apple iTunes helped to bring the legitimate sale and distribution of music and later, other content.

Copyright owners have had to endure years of loss and it seems that efforts are being made to introduce other forms of control. Laws and governments may side more with the content owners, so we might have to expect more interruptions until the bots or other technologies improve.

Kauai — From Christmas to New Years

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abundant, academics, activities, air, airplane, alcohol, bag, banana, bar, bathing suit, beach, bed, board, boarding, boogie, bowl, breakfast, brother-in-law, burrito, camera, cameras, clearing, coconut, combo, confident, contract, course, crowded, daily, daughter, days, demonstrate, dining, dinner, dirt, dishes, drift, drink, drinks, drive, edit, electric, expensive, family, fancy, fantastic, feature, feed, fire, fireworks, fish, float, flying, food, fun, generous, golf, graduate, grand caravan, grand hyatt, guacamole, guests, guitar, hawaii, hawaiian, hosts, ice cream, instructor, instructors, jazz, juggling, kalua, land, lanterns, launching, lava, lecture, lesson, links, live, macadamia, Marriott Waiohai Beach Club, mask, master, meal, memories, mexican, mitch, morning, movie, movies, music, neal, nelson, new years eve, night, nut, onboard, outdoor, pacific, paddle board, pancake, park, party, pedro, people, performance, photoblog, photography, photos, plastic, pocket, poipu, pool, post, potholes, price, private, pulled pork, qualifications, qualifies, red, reef, regulators, resort, restaurant, riding, road, rocks, rough, scuba, seattle, shore, shot, sing, sister, skills, snorkel, snorkelling, son, sort, sorted, spam, stand-up, stocking, storage, sun, sunrise, sunset, surf, surfer, surfing, surfs, swam, swim, swimming, syrup, talked, teaching, trains, treat, trip, TV, ukulele, underwater, vacation, vancouver, velocity, video, virgin, waiohai, walked, water, waterproof camera, waves, wife, world war II, written, youtube

Whew! We are flying home from our fantastic vacation at the the Marriott Waiohai Beach Club in Poipu, Kauai. My sister made sure we were kept busy experiencing all that we could. I have already mentioned some things we did. I continued to take an enormous number of photos, many of waves and sunrises. My storage for photos has been eaten up by the unexpected videos I shot with the little waterproof camera my sister gave us. I am now down to the onboard storage of both my cameras. I should make it, however, I will have to do some real juggling to find storage space to sort photos and edit all the videos into a short movie.

Back to the activities. Our hosts, my sister and brother-in-law, were truly generous by not only stocking the unit we stayed in with plenty of food, but also, getting us out to eat in the local dining places. For them, it is the experience with the dining rather than the price, however, they always point out that we are the least expensive guests to take out since we do not drink alcohol. So, the food is even more abundant.

One night we went to a semi-outdoor restaurant nearby. We sat right near the live music which included a fellow who surfs by day and plays the electric ukulele and sings by night. He was good too. Besides the fellow playing guitar at the outdoor bar at the Waiohai, we did not hear much more live music. Oh, there was a small jazz combo at the Grand Hyatt bar as we walked through.

One morning, we went for breakfast at the local golf course and had another huge meal. It seems that the World War II canned meat spam, still has a following in Hawaii. There are many dishes incorporating the meat, long forgotten elsewhere. I also had Kalua pulled pork, on other occasions too, even on the airplane a while ago. I tried my sister’s breakfast burrito and had a banana and Macadamia nut pancake with coconut syrup. I simply could not resist.

Another night we went to a Mexican restaurant, yes, Mexican in Hawaii, just to be different, I guess. The unique experience here was the table-side guacamole. Pedro came and made the guacamole, two servings, in a lava bowl right at our table and it was surely the best I have ever had.

We were treated to more surfing lessons. Our instructor, looked like true Hawaiian surfer. No family, just teaching surfing everyday, all day. He was there at sunrise and still around after sunset. Very dedicated. We were learning on reef surf, different from the beach surf at the previous lessons. All I can say is, it is still hard to do. But, we sure had fun. My son really took to stand-up paddle boarding and spent some hours on the last day trying to graduate to catching waves on the board.

The resort has a new contract to have daily scuba lessons available. Our instructor struck me immediately as very confident. There was my sister and three of us from my family. Neal told us that we had to do the academics first, so, he gave a short lecture, but, at a high velocity. One rarely runs across someone who can speak so fast. He assured us by giving his long list of qualifications, including the fact that he is the top person for the Pacific area and does work in movies and trains and qualifies instructors. Next, we had a couple of performance skills to master and demonstrate, such as clearing our mask of water and finding and clearing our regulators, all under water. It turned out to be so simple that, in no time, we were swimming around the pool underwater and having a great time. After, my sister invited Neal for a drink where we talked more about scuba and other interesting stuff. We came away from the experience knowing it had been a real treat. We had been in the company of a true master, just as we were with Mitch and Nelson, our surfing instructors.

As the trip was nearing its end, my sister urged me to do a few more things. One morning they took me to a somewhat remote beach for some photography. The drive was rough, through some private land. The road was the common red dirt with deep potholes, however, the Grand Caravan finally made it. We walked along the beach, along some rocks, I took many photos and then we did some snorkelling.

It was the last day, so when we got back from the early morning trip, my sister still had a few more activities for me to do. I had to keep up, somehow, so I grabbed some food and then we were off to have a swim with my wife and daughter at another beach and then, do some boogie boarding at still another beach on the other side of the resort and past a park. It was a crowded beach that we went to. People were body surfing and boogie boarding. It was difficult to keep from running into each other. On one ride I crossed over and my son ended up riding on top of me all the way into the shore.

I was not finished yet. My sister had some fish food to feed fish while snorkeling, so, off I was again to snorkel. My wife even went too. Not knowing where to put the food while we swam out to the reef, my sister suggested I shove the plastic bag into my bathing suit pocket. At one point, as I was using my small video camera, I realized that there were more fish than normal. A quick check of my pocket and I knew they already got the fish food.

Finally, it was time to get ready for the New Years Eve party on the beach. We started at the bar with some fancy drinks, virgin for most of us, and some dinner. People were already setting off fireworks on the beach and launching fire lanterns (I know there is proper name for them, but, I don’t have it on hand) that would float high into the air and drift away. Then came the big Poipu Beach fireworks display and the party was over before midnight. We went and had some ice cream, watched TV and then got tired, so we went to bed.

I feel as if there is so much I have not written about. We really did pack plenty of memories into this eight days of fun in the sun. We are about to land in Seattle for our connecting flight to Vancouver.

I will post some photos on my PhotoBlog and Feature Photos website once I get them sorted. I may even post some video on YouTube. I may also post links relating to the trip, if I get a chance.