Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk Gets Santa Cruz Moving

The Santa Cruz Blues Festival is one of the Bay Area's Memorial Day weekend traditions, and Saturday's opening-day concert was a perfect introduction to the season, with a warm sun, cloudless sky, and happy dancing people stripping off winter clothes and starting on summer tans.

There were five performers on Saturday, including a group from New Orleans called Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk. 

With a name like that you think of George Clinton and that's in there, but it sounded more Sly and the Family Stone with an extra bass and a rock-n-roll drum kit, almost like a funk garage band. I even thought about Edgar Winter a couple of times.

Two of the members are descendants of the Neville Brothers, with Ivan singing and talking from the keyboard like he was preaching from the choir, and Ian on lead guitar moving comfortably from funky counterpoint for the bass lines to guitar hero solos. 

 

Ivan Neville                                                                                   Raymond Weber and Ian Neville

Drummer Raymond Weber played like the guy you want in charge of your Neighborhood Watch - substantial and secure without drawing attention to himself except when necessary.

What makes their sound, though, is that they have two bass players, Nick Daniels (below left) and Tony Hall (below right), and you can spend the entire set completely absorbed in what they are doing. Sometimes Daniels would put out a traditional funk sound while Hall would provide a lower rock-n-roll thump, at other times one line would be a quasi-solo with some wa-wa while the other was an accompaniment.

 

They used four-string and five-string basses to give them more range. With the variety in texture and pitch they often found that place between the bass and lead guitar, almost like the way violas sit between the violins and cellos in a symphony. It was always interesting and sounded new.

You'd worry that all this low funk would mean nothing but bass would be coming off the stage but the swirly keyboards and the vocals and Ian Neville's guitar, sometimes filling, sometimes virtuoso, all shone through. The absence of brass is another thing that gives this band a flavor that goes beyond traditional funk. It's bottom-heavy but doesn't get stuck in its swamp.

For the last number Ivan came off the keyboard and picked up the guitar that Hall had played for some of the numbers. Ian played a solo that wouldn't have been out of place in early Pearl Jam and the rest of them met in that perfect place where only music can takes you and not often enough and with their playing confirmed the Nietzsche quote about how life without music would be a mistake.

What I liked most about the band was that I felt like I got to know them a little bit. I could imagine them playing around in the studio or a local club. There was nothing about their playing that made me think about market research, or that they built their sound or personality based on what someone told them would sell.

Some bands all you hear is how they sound like someone else, but not these guys. It's also easy to imagine them fitting into the ecumenical New Orleans soundscape, where the primary requirements are that you get your music to move and that you not be boring in how you do it.

Taj Mahal LIVES the Blues

Internationally recognized blue musician Taj Mahal (stage name for Henry Saint Clair Fredericks) played at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival this weekend. His stage name apparently came to him in a dream about Gandhi and India.

Winner of two Grammy Awards, Taj played up a storm with guitar, banjo and keyboard and while he didn't play the harmonica yesterday, it is yet another instrument in his bag of tricks.

Every Blues festival needs performers like Taj Mahal, who sounds as though he's played the music every day for as long as he has lived. He had a set-long conversation with his guitar, mostly about women and lovin', and he welcomed us to listen in.

With passion and humor, he fuses sounds from Africa, the South Pacific, the Caribbean and traditional American blues to get his audience moving. He asks the girls to scream and the guys to hollar. He then asks all of us to shout and adds a bit of relationship advice for all the men in the audience - "men, do yourself a favor, learn how to dance and you won't have any more problems."

Below, Taj's bass player Bill Rich

What I loved most about his candid style was not just the fact that his music was all blues, but his raw authenticity, his quiet energy and his ability to make you smile with every note he hit on his guitar.....simultaneously he adds witty words of wisdom into the mix.

He has played with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Ry Cooder and Lightnin' Hopkins as well as in the legendary Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. Critics describe his voice as "gruff, gritty, smooth and sultry" all at the same time.

Emphasizing dance more than once on stage, Taj is a musician who wants his audience to move and I might add: move as if you mean it. And believe me, I did and loved every minute of it.

Santa Cruz Blues Festival: Authentic & Intimate

Brad Kava, co-owner of the Santa Cruz Blues Festival talks about this year's Blues Festival which is being held this weekend at Aptos Village Park.

The event drew more than 2,000 people today who threw down blankets and beach chairs and took in New Orleans style pork and ribs, draft beer and music from the likes of Ben Harper & Relentless7, Taj Mahal, Joseph Arthur, Eric Lindell and Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk. Sunday is sold out but those lucky enough to have purchased a ticket in advance will be able to take in Buddy Guy, Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band, Eric Burdon & The Animals, and Coco Montoya Was (Not Was).

Wall Street Journal (Digits) - It's Graduation Season for Robots too

Lauren Goode reports on the Willow Garage PR2 graduation ceremony and celebration this past week in Menlo Park, CA.

KGO News on Robots Graduation

ABC's KGO Channel 7 News covered the news of Willow Garage's robot graduation and party this week.

iPad Gets Cheers Down Under

From Wall Street Journal Digits this week, iPad goes down under and gets lots of cheer.

First Robots Graduation in History

Willow Garage hosted the first robots graduation in history last night in their Menlo Park offices on Willow Road, the same road where Google was birthed.

CEO Steve Cousins and founder Scott Hassan gave an emotional speech about how Willow Garage got started, the vision behind it and everything that led up to this historical moment.

Hundreds of people gathered together for the celebration: friends, fans, employees, a couple of local mayors, press, bloggers and universities. Among the university attendees were the 11 recipients of the PR2 beta program, who flew in from around the world to get trained on their robots this week and to celebrate the honor.

Together with the visionaries at Willow Garage and the Directors of the Personal Robotics Program Keenan Wryobek and Eric Berger, the recipients will work hard in the coming two years to accelerate the growth of robotics research and development and yes, change the world.

Below, Keenan and Eric thanked the open source community, the recipients, other Willow Garagers and of course, the PR2 robots. As the winners were announced, the PR2s decided it was time for them to celebrate too, with a little flag waving and dance for the crowd. I think they were starting to realize that they now have fans.

Later on, the PR2s danced with the attendees and zipped around the floor to show off their abilities. And why not, last night was about celebration and giving thanks to a community who accomplished this great achievement. As Scott so rightfully put it at the beginning of the event - "we can't do it alone, we don't want to do it alone." With more effort, resources, passion and talent behind robotics, advancement can happen that much faster.

A few shots of the event, the speeches, the party and the dancing below. A thumbs up to ROS and the efforts of the Willow Garage team and recipients who are going to work together to make magical things happen in the next two years.

Eric Berger demonstrates PR2 in front of a group of bloggers and press

Eric Berger, Scott Hassan, Steve Cousins and Keenan Wyrobek

The Singularity Hub guys Keith Kleiner and Aaron Saenz

Googlers and friends showed up to celebrate

Yes, that's John Markoff in the Texai robot

Scott Hassan

Steve Cousins

The PR2 robot graduation ceremony, the first in history

Steve Cousins and Scott Hassan

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

PR2 claps as his audience claps for him

Keenan Wryobek

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Jonathan Knowles, Renee Blodgett

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Kamal Shah and Janet Rae Dupree

The deserving 11 recipients are:

• Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

• Bosch

• Georgia Institute of Technology

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

• MIT CSAIL

• Stanford University

• Technische Universität München

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory

• University of Southern California

• University of Tokyo, JSK Robotics Laboratory

Oh PR2, Shall We Dance?

Last night, I had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure) of dancing with a PR2 robot at Willow Garage, the same PR2 that will go off to UPENN next week with the UPENN recipient winners of the PR2 beta program. Until we meet again.

Branding on Facebook Community Pages or NOT?

John Bell has a really great piece today on Facebook and brands - and why community pages don't really matter.

Like most of my clients (and we're talking small companies, not Fortune 1000 brands), most brands spend a lot of time and energy -- as John puts it -- "culling the English garden-growth of brand related pages." He adds with wit and also frustration - "they have gone through and brought the miscellaneous pages from employees in the Phillipines, the franchisee in Lubbock, and the factory in India into alignment with the brand. Many have "taken over" unofficial pages that infringe on copyright from miscellaneous fans."

And now, we all have to deal with yet more clutter - Facebook 'brand' clutter that is not only hard to manage but confusing to fans.

He asks: did they do it to spawn more pages for advertising? Is this a mild form of brandjacking like Seth Godin's Brands in Public or BzzAgent's Bzzscapes? Are the pages meant to motivate brands to buy advertising to sit alongside the user-generated content to get their side of the story in front of folks? Full post here - it's worth a read.

Social Media "Tech" Experts from the Inside

Jeremiah Owyang put together an amazing social media expert list a few months ago (the people are doing it rather than consulting others how to) and I just came across a really cool Pearltree Foremski created of those in the tech sector, my world.