Friday Favorites 2/28/2014

Forty years ago, my love of acoustic guitars reflected my favorite musical groups, bands like the Eagles which featured acoustic guitar accompaniment as well as electric and of a generation of singer-songwriters like James Taylor.  My tastes in jazz ran to horn- or piano-driven ensembles, although Wes Montgomery and Charlie Byrd were certainly on my musical radar.  But in the the late seventies, a confluence of musical styles, from World Music and what would come to be called New Age Music, along with something called smooth jazz, began to promote acoustic guitars as lead instruments.  Rock musicians like Craig Chaquico and Peter White began to record jazz instrumentals featuring acoustic guitars and jazz artists known for their electric guitar artistry, like Al Di Meola, began to play acoustic and gravitate toward smooth jazz or World Music.   World and New Age Music brought flamenco guitar into popular recordings in the form of neuvo flamenco, which featured flamenco-style guitar in less traditional settings like jazz, salsa and rock.  I was lucky enough to be around for the ride.

Friday Favorites 3/11/2011

About twenty years ago, I went through a brief New Age period.   I needed more spirituality in my life and religion didn’t seem to be a viable option for me.   The mix of Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions, blended with various psychological and parapsychological philosophies seemed a possibility … with the benefit of potentially cracking my rigid rational scientific approach to life.   If I’ve posted about this before, mea culpa … when you’re sixty-six and have posted 425 times in the last two years, there’s bound to be just a bit of repetition.  Besides, this is just the introduction to the real subject of the post.  You knew that by now, didn’t you?

La Guitarra

So, it’s the last day of June which also happens to be the last day of the first half of the year.  Looking back at six months of Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog, I’ve posted 116 times so far this year.    The fifteen posts in June (not counting this one) have tended toward serious topics, from rants about my failing computer in Damn Pugers, to spiritual speculations like Parking Lot Spirituality and Being Open Minded, to subjects like the Gulf Oil Spill (in It’s a Disaster) and the effects of tribal behavior on modern society in Tribes.  The struggles with on-again, off-again retirement continued in Scheduled? Me? and Going Red.    Even Monday Smiles have been bittersweet, finding smiles in retrospect.   I notice, too, that I haven’t posted about music since March, when I talked about my love of Guitar Music.   So, in the interest of ending June on a positive note, I thought I’d post about my favorite form of guitar music, Flamenco.