MUSIC CATALOGUE:
Brand X Trilogy
Brand X Timeline
Sarah Pillow Remixes
Sarah Pillow Nuove Musiche
Sarah Pillow Paper Cuts
Tunnels Live The Art of Living Dangerously
Tunnels Progressivity
Tunnels Progressivity
Tunnels Painted Rock
Mike Clark - Paul Jackson - Marc Wagnon Conjunction
Marc Wagnon An Afterthought
Marc Wagnon Shadowlines
Nicholas D'Amato Nullius in Verba
Percy Jones Cape Catastrophy
Percy Jones Propeller Music
Morris Pert The Voyage
Morris Pert The Music of Stars
Morris Pert Desert Dances |
Listen to all the Buckyball releases in a continuous stream.
Make your own mix!! |
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This morning we were driving on the highway and after a day off in Milwaukee where we got to stroll along the shore of Lake Michigan and hang out at the 24 hr internet cafe, we realized that it is a very nice city full of cool people who would have enjoyed last night's gig if they had known about it- how do we connect!?
The next morning we were driving along on our way to Des Moines and suddenly a police car passed us and started flashing its lights. At first, Sakura, who was driving, thought she was being stopped for speeding, and this was the Iowa way of doing it....after slowing down we realized that someone was sitting on the side of the overpass about to jump onto the highway below. All the traffic was stopped on both sides of the highway, and we happened to be the first car in line. We sat there for about 20 minutes which allowed us to put this all in perspective. We have a really good time going around with great musicians playing in a new town every night, granted our butt is on the line, in more than one way, but we are not running out of options like the poor soul on the overpass.
We never found out the end of that story, since we were able to turn back and loop around. But as we got back onto the highway further west there was oncoming traffic, so we hope the guy was convinced that jumping off an overpass in the middle of Iowa wasn't the way to go. Incidentally, the policeman told us that they knew the guy was having problems and that they had been watching him since the morning, as he had been pacing back and forth along the overpass, which is the tallest point in miles.
Along the highway there are all kinds of billboards, most advertising snowplows, as it must be snowing a lot in the winter around here. As I am spacing out I see a big one with Percy’s ex-band mate Phil Collins advertising some local (probably owned by Clear Channel) liteFM. The dichotomy strikes me that they were the tightest rhythm section, If you have checked out the third CD on Trilogy you know what I mean; and now we are whizzing by in a van on our way to a gig in Des Moines, and Phil is strangely frozen in time. Percy’s music is still evolving at full throttle but Phil's... and the connection does not stop here- Julien did play a gig at Phil’s house for last New Year's... the plan is that if he gets the gig again, he'll get Percy to play bass just to see Phil's reaction!
Jazzy Willy's is the nicest place. Vicki, the owner, has bought an old Pizza Hut and turned it into a venue for live music. A warm feeling emanates from it and the room sounds really good, it is a jazz club (as its name indicates), and we get to play soft; the last three venues were more rock-oriented and it tends to get loud on stage, some of the listening gets lost, but here we can really hear each other and great things happen. We definitely are jazz-oriented with a rock element - so both venues work, but when forced to play more quietly, some really great things happen. The evening is a blast, Tunnels ends the 4th set with an extended improvisation joined by Julien. |
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| Lance is a veteran of the road. His credits go far and wide, from Cassandra Wilson to Elliot Sharp, Joan Osbourne to Myra Medford to name a few. Although he can look pretty tough, he's a teddy bear and has a really high voice when he answers the phone in his motel room. He does not like bugs and Iowa is somehow full of them, and they bite, even the Lady Bugs. We know some things about Lance, but he's still a mystery and we hope to have it cracked in the next three weeks... |
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| Speaking of a man of mystery, here is one that will not cease to surprise you. Percy, The Man from Wales, has amazing fans the world over with his dazzling and iconoclastic bass technique, and these days the groove is getting thicker as he gets tighter with Lance. But Percy’s world extends much further into the electromagnetic realm. Here is a man that will tell you on a daily basis the state of the ionosphere layer, from which he depends to communicate to the far reaches of the world. |
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| It's always hard to be far from your home working in a far away land. Many times you have to start at the bottom of the ladder. But Julien takes it in stride, and nothing will stop this young man from reaching the peak of show business in this or another country. Um, Julien, you missed a spot on the van. |
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| Sarah and Marc or Marc and Sarah- its my wife and I or the Queen and I, the King and her just does not sound good. It is a constant challenge to be at the helm of this Buckyball adventure on the road, we have set up shop at the back of the van, where our two laptops and cell phones are buzzing on a steady basis. I guess we can call it a Buckyball probe that goes around sampling the public’s moods and reality, allways in contact with the mother ship back in NYC, this rock Island where we are anchored. |
Days off are great because we can let loose and discover more of the land we are traveling. On a hunch from Sarah, we landed in Iowa City, a nice college town. We like these because they are fulfilling most of our urban needs (internet cafes, book stores, good coffee, cheap beer, etc...). One of the oddest things in this town is their odd way of double parking in the middle of the road- imagine trying this in Manhattan!!!
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| the Iowa plains are beautiful and peaceful, and it feels good to be sharing this wide silence with birds, caterpillars and... bugs. |
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