back into the swing. the u.s.a. looks different when you’re showing it off to a girl. hye-ryun told me (not 12 hours after getting off the plane) that she missed kimchi. SHE DOESN’T EVEN EAT KIMCHI. though she jumped right into the american way when she ordered two overfilled chilli cheese dogs, super size cheese fries, and a diet coke. could have been american after all…. well…. the camara stuff would have given her away. she went crazy with my new digital camara, and even took it into the bathroom at a nyc restaurant. (still wondering what she was doing with it and who she was doing it with!).
band stuff is on hold at the moment. though i picked up a sampler and have been playing with my new toy as much as the work schedule will allow.

i have a new nephew as of june 8th. a beautiful little guy who obviously takes after his uncle. i get to go home next month and teach him how to play bass. also, a show this weekend. a 4th of july/(yuk)canada day party with 3 bands playing. we’re playing last because we like to play to drunk people. drunk people are more fun. though they don’t always listen so well. a couple of originals. my favorite being one by our lead guitarist called “monster cock”.

the show was fine. got through the set. got a bra thrown at me. get drunk and had a good time. still, we’re done. our bassist just didn’t have the commitment we needed. which was relatively small. still couldn’t do it, so danny and i are moving on. i’m a bass player now. practicing my new scales and my bass strut. still have our other cover band as well (i’m on guitar on that one). the originals will have to wait a short bit longer. guess we need a new batch anyway. i’m a bassist now, and should write cool bass licks.

rough practice the other night. and the show is in 3 days. a very rough practice. back in the practice room tonight trying to salvage the set list. we’ll have to see. if the whole thing falls flat on its face, then i may have to go back to playing other people’s songs and melodies. that’s what most people play and that’s what most people want to hear. we’ll see….

playing at the ‘cool bar’ (the usual) on may 20 with the 3 piece original band. not even close to ready. turns out that three piece bands can sound kind of empty without guitar solos. but none of us are into them, so we’re having to find other ways to do things. kazoos, radio samples, harmonica, and other ideas have come up. a real reminder as to how much “what we`re used to ” effects what we like to play and like to listen to. can`t be experimental unless you stop listening to britney spears (or at least, listen to her back to back with “brainiac” and “self” or some other groups from out in left field. our own stuff is loud, i guess, rootsy punk (whatever the hell that means) but i`m sure someone out there can think of a catchy name for the sound and make it a new genre. oh, and we have a new name. “melancholy disco bitches”. sounds like a novelty name if i`ve ever heard one, and we`ll see how long it lasts.

in a couple of hours, we have our first little mini-show in a long time. playing a couple covers and following a very good blues band. break a leg, blow a vocal chord, snap a string….

Musician beats swords into axes
Posted 4/19/2006 11:28 PM ET
By Sibylla Brodzinsky, Special for USA TODAY
BOGOTA, Colombia ?Cesar L?ez grips the wooden rifle butt and runs his hand up the barrel. But he pulls strings instead of a trigger, and the room fills with ballads instead of bullets.
The instrument is an escopetarra, an electric guitar he created from a shotgun that is becoming a symbol of peace in his war-torn country, Colombia. “The weapon is still present, but when you strike the first chord, everything that’s violent about it disappears,” says L?ez, 32, a musician and composer.

“That’s the kind of transformation that we would like to see in our country.”

Colombia has been racked by more than 40 years of civil war. The conflict pitted leftist rebels fighting for a socialist revolution against the government and right-wing paramilitary forces. The paramilitary groups are illegal militias formed to counter rebels in areas where the government had little or no power. More than 100,000 people have died in the conflict since 1964.

Last year, Colombia passed a Justice and Peace bill that offers reduced prison time and other incentives to paramilitaries who turn in their weapons and promise to abide by the law. As a result, more than 31,000 paramilitary fighters have demobilized.

Some of their decommissioned weapons will be given to L?ez, who will convert them into musical instruments. He is working with AK-47 assault rifles that were decommissioned as part of the paramilitary peace process.

‘The language of creativity’

Though L?ez created the instruments to protest all violence, the government has chosen them to be symbols against one of the nation’s rising scourges: land mines. Last year, 1,077 people were killed or maimed by rebel-planted land mines in Colombia, more than in any other country, according to the government’s Land Mine Observatory.

“This initiative fits in perfectly with our program because it fights the language of war with the language of creativity,” says Luz Piedad Herrera, director of Colombia’s anti-land-mine campaign, which is financing the creation of AK-47 escopetarras.

The idea for the escopetarra came to L?ez in 2003 as he stood outside a Bogota social club that had just been bombed. He rushed to the scene as part of the Rapid Response Artists Battalion, a group of musicians who decided to bring music to the tragedies of Colombia’s conflict.

“I was standing there holding my guitar next to a soldier holding his weapon, and I looked at our stances and realized they were virtually identical,” L?ez recalls.

The name escopetarra combines the Spanish words for shotgun (escopeta) and guitar (guitarra). L?ez designed the first five instruments from shotguns donated by the Bogota mayor’s office from a cache turned in as part of a weapons-exchange program involving mostly common criminals.

Working with a luthier (a person who makes stringed instruments), L?ez’s design has the barrel of the shotgun running through the neck of the guitar and the strings mounted near the butt.

Committed to non-violence

The instruments are donated to rock and pop stars who spread a message of non-violence and campaign against land mines. “There is a commitment that comes with owning one. This is not just an exercise in design,” L?ez says.

Colombian rock star Juanes, who has become a spokesman against land mines, was the first to receive one of the transformed weapons. He recently auctioned it off in Los Angeles for $17,000 as part of a benefit for Adopt-A-Minefield, a United Nations Association of the USA program that raises funds to clear minefields and assist survivors.

Argentine singer and social activist Fito P?z also has one of the guitars. L?ez says he hopes to give escopetarras to Shakira, Paul McCartney, Carlos Santana and even the Dalai Lama, who is scheduled to visit Colombia in May.

Ideally, Herrera says, many of the nation’s weapons would be transformed into musical instruments as part of peace deals with all of Colombia’s warring factions.

Leftist rebels, blamed in a recent U.S. indictment for killings, kidnappings and cocaine production and distribution, refuse to negotiate with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Since he took office in 2002, Uribe has increased military funding to combat the insurgency.

His successes against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have boosted his popularity. An Invamer/Gallup Poll published last month predicted Uribe would win 64% of the vote in the presidential election May 28 ?far more than the 50% he needs to avoid a runoff.

getting there. three or so originals ready to go. another three or four on the way. have no idea if they’re good or not. don’t care at all. just happy to be singing words and melodies that don’t belong to someone else. been too long. the three piece arrangement seems to be just right for now. and the practice room we’re renting just seems too perfect for dirty music. so, my songs are becomming filthy. again, don’t care, until showtime comes around again. should be the 13th of may. playing with another band that’s doing mostly covers. they’ll probably kick our ass but again, really don’t care. original songs!!!

might have a new bassist. a korean guy who is an absolute bad ass jammed out with us at the cool bar on friday night. did a bunch of standards and one timers and had a great laugh. did the first ‘guitar solo duel’ i’ve done in a long long long time and sounded like it. but had a blast. the two band idea might actually be happening. one cover band, one band strictly for originals. one band with the chops and one band that’s just plain weird. unfortunatly, that will probably translate into one band that people want to come out and see and one band that will play to empty rooms. but i can deal with it. might even make me feel rebelious for a change (i’m wearing a button down collar shirt today and i feel stupid). anyway, three hours of class, lunch, then three more hours. mondays are tough. more later….

a little jam tonight (friday) then i’m out of town. off to monkey around in an amusement park and afterward, spend the night in the mountains. routine sucks and even if i have to pay a redicuous amount of money to go to a big park set aside for people to have nice, costly, conusmer friendly fun, well, i’m gonna do it cause it’s different. around mid-terms at work. getting close to burn out time and close to the downhill turn toward the end of the semester. made up my tests, now i just have to pick out my C students cause the institution wants at least 30% to be C students. too bad the students can’t grade the institution. it only seems fair.
a few new songs for the new three piece group. “Dead Eye”, “Swimming Pool”, “Days” (my favorite for the time being), and a happy little falsetta anthem for little guys called “Cowboy Killer”. Yippie