Good Friends of Music!
Hey there and coming to you with wet hair and salty infused sinuses. There was mini surf this morning but I still got launched a few times and inhaled the wild blue…
PS at Beacons…
Today’s story is about ripping off pristine Bach chord progressions and showcasing the end result in a hippy bookstore in downtown Del Mar circa the late 1970’s.
My gateway into the vast world of Bach was through Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson balancing on one leg, playing overblown flute to his killer version of J.S. Bach’s “Bouree.” It was rocking and that was enough to inspire me to search out the sheet music and learn the piece for solo guitar. After the first phrase repeats the tune shifts into what might be called a bridge and it’s there that the chord movement caught my ear. It’s pure Bach-ian magic with all of the best math and inspiration rolled into one and wouldn’t this work as a samba, I thought? Luckily chord progressions aren’t copyrightable and so I took the magic, integrated it with my Brazilian tune and presented new to the world “Ocean Song, Earth Song.”
That took place back in the late 70’s and the new composition had it’s world premier at a concert held at The Ocean Song Gallery on the corner of Coast Highway 101 and 15th Street in Del Mar. A wonderful Argentinian woman named Virginia Igonda ran the place and right next door, connected by a walk through, was a fantastic book store called The Earth Song, run by Jim Meadows. These folks were high quality humans who embraced the arts and thought nothing of morphing their stores, filled to the brim with stuff, into a Sunday night concert hall. I couldn’t believe the transformation! All of the books and art items had to be relocated for the night and then the space was opened up for the musos and audience members to celebrate the special world of live music.
A lot of magic went down at those concerts and it was only fitting to name the new Brazilian Bach mashup after Virginia and Jim. I remember the piece going over well with the audience but I’ll bet you anything that they didn’t know that they we’re experiencing pirated Bach chord progressions in the flesh.
Dangerous music!
This week we’re presenting Peter Sprague Plays Ocean Song, Earth Song first as a realtime live concert and then the day after as a world-wide Live(ish) at SpragueLand streaming show.
Here are the details for the 6/31/21 concert:
and here are the details for the July 1 livestream show:
Here’s the YouTube link for the livestream concert.
For both shows we’re keying in on songs of the ocean and songs of the earth. Luckily that pretty much includes everything except for maybe OUTER SPACE. Sorry, we won’t be playing David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” on this episode but we will play the previously talked about “Ocean Song, Earth Song” plus the firmly grounded in the earth composition “Norwegian Wood” by our favorites, The Beatles.
A guaranteed good time for all!
The band includes some of the best with John Opferkuch on piano; Gunnar Biggs on bass; Duncan Moore on drums; me on guitar; plus Aubrey Johnson, a special guest vocalist from NYC.
Price of admission? Actually the concert is free but we will have a “virtual tip jar” complete with PayPal, Zelle and Venmo info for you to donate whatever you feel good about. Also, old reliable snail mailing checks works too. You folks have been super generous with this and it makes us happy.
Paypal: petersprague@sbcglobal.net
(It’ll show up as Satyam Music, that’s my music company)
Venmo: @PeterSprague
Zelle: Peter Sprague peter@petersprague.com
mail checks via snail mail to: Peter Sprague
311 East Glaucus St.
Encinitas, CA 92024
A few notes:
You don’t have to watch the show live. The same YouTube link will bring up the recording for you to view anytime.
If you do watch it live (and we recommend this), you can participate in the live chat during the concert as long as you have a YouTube account.
Click here https://youtu.be/MEaCbZ-DlqQ to watch a vid, leading you through the easy process of creating a YouTube account. Maybe do this before the concert begins.
If you do have an account and you’re logged in, you can type something fun into the chat box and that’s how we create modern day jazz community in this era of the pandemic. Maybe start with something simple like “Hi, this is Lisa from Wyoming” or “Hi, I’m Reggie from Portland.” By doing this we’ve got an app that will magically take your name and location and drop a pin on a spinning globe. During the show we’ll visit all of the listeners and say hi and marvel at your exotic places of residence. No worries about privacy…How many Lisa’s are in the entire state of Wyoming? Or “Reggie’s in Portland, Maine?
See you in the ocean!
best, Peter