Tuesday 21st: a few museums, Dr Lonnie Smith

I spent the morning on the internet trying to work out a few things. Then I ate another pizza. I think I talked to a girl from Newcastle in Australia. Or else I did that the previous day. She seems quite nice. She does environmental resource management.I think that's an interesting area.

Then I went to see some museums. The Natural History Museum is just a block away. So I went there.

They had this cool aquarium filled with ants. They have provided a place for them to make a nest on the left island, then on the right island they give them leaves and food. They ants have to climb across the stick because underneath is water. You can see the ants carrying across huge bits of leaf after they've cut it off the whole leaf. It was really cool.

Here is a grid of tv screens showing things about the environemtn. It was cool because they've set up mirrors on each side and the top and bottom , and at an angle so that the reflections bouncing off each other make it appear that there is a huge sphere of tv screens.

A slice of tree that was 1300 years old I think. Or soemthing like that. It is from the species which grows in California. I've forgotten the name.

Charles Darwin.

I left the Natural History Museum and then walked to the Science Museum. It is next door.

This room has a lot of aircraft engines on the right hand side. I found that these all looks really quite cool, which is strange because I usually don't care about this kind of stuff. But they looked so cool that I had the idea that I want to know how this stuff works...

Here is some flight simulators. The grey thing has people inside. They must be strapped in because the box moves around exactly as they would if they were flying the plane. You can see what they see in the tv screen on the right. They were down some very extreme moves and lots of screams could be heard from inside.

I got home from the museums at about 5:30 after getting some supplies from the supermarket. I cooked another pizza. I'm getting a bit sick of these supermarket boxed pizzas actually.

Then I went out and caught the tube to Leicester Square to go to the Dr Lonnie Smith concert at Ronnie Scott's. I got in and I sat next to a lady and guy from London. They were really friendly. They were big fans of Lonnie Smith. The guy is a little bit into obscure music.

I was really pleased because I could see that they had a real B3 organ for this concert, and two leslie speakers. For Joey Defrancesco he was using a new version of the B3 which just digitally models the sound of the original, and he had no leslie speakers. The guy behind me said that this guy is the greatest B3 player in the world. Everyone around me was pretty excited to hear this concert. I was too. It was good.

The support band was alright. They were playing slightly bebop type stuff I think. But I've forgotten how the classifications work exactly. There were lots of flowing lines in quite a smooth intense way. I had to go outside after two songs because I'm still recovering from a cold and something was greatly irritating my throat making me want to cough a lot. I went outside and talked to the guy at the door. He was really nice. He gave me a bottle of water.

I went back in and caught the last song from the cover band. The seats seat four, and so another guy got seated by me and the two nice English people. When the lady came to seat the other guy next to me, she was really weird. She said "okay you *really* have to move..." indicating that this other guy was going to sit there. Really strange way of stating it! I said "alright", and moved.

Dr Lonnie Smith came on. He is a really eccentric guy. He was being funny because he had difficulty getting into his seat because there were lots of microphones and things in the way. There were three playing: Dr Lonnie Smith on B3 organ, Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar, and Jamire Williams on drums.

The first song started by building up very slowly. It built up until it was a really huge sound, and very funky. It was probably the most incredible thing I've ever heard. Dr Lonnie Smith has his B3 organ, and on top is a small synthesizer. At the more intense parts of the song he was introducing some slightly harsh, low synthesizer sounds. It was a great effect. The guitar had a bit of filter, octave effects, wah, delay, and distortion at times. It was also going through a fender twin reverb amp which was set at a really nice volume for the tubes. It was a joy to hear. He was playing a Gibson full hollow body jazz acoustic electric. Maybe an ES 175. The pickups were really good. Together with the drummer as well, these created some really amazing combinations of sounds. I'm really excited to try combining these sorts of sounds someday. I had an idea recently to build a foot pedal piano like is found underneath a B3 organ, and then have it as a controller for an analogue synthesizer.

All the songs the band played were amazing. They had really great musicianship. All songs developed a lot from loud to quiet etc and lots of improvising. Also the musicians were always having a great time. Dr Lonnie Smith likes to just do some grooving sometimes in the middle of his playing. The drummer took a few solos which wiped everyone's face off.

They played one song called bee hive I think. It started off with strange happy sounding synthesizer stuff. Then it got crazy, and Dr Lonnie Smith was growling into the microphone "I TOLD YOU NOT TO PLAY IN THE FOREST!....... RUN!! .... RUN!" and then I guess the people were attacked by bees, because the sounds got really crazy. Then it got really funky. It was incredible.

This concert was probably the greatest thing I've ever heard, or at least an equal. It has convinced me that I have to become a big fan of this guy.

It was like this youtube video, except you could see them all having a great time and adding wacky stuff, and pushing their amps and dynamics into the nice places.