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Scott Gentzen
GMC:er
49 years old
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Centreville, VA, USA
Born May-11-1974
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Photography, music, homebrew, computers
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Scott Gentzen

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1 Sep 2009
Band: Dick Dale and Jimmy Dale
Place: The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
Date: Aug 28th, 2009
Tickets: US$25

Location

http://www.birchmere.com

The Birchmere is a 500 seat venue in Alexandria, VA not far from Reagan National Airport. The main part of the Birchmere is set up dinner-theater style with tables and waitstaff for food and drink service. Food's expensive but it's pretty good. There isn't an open "pit" area here. Historically, the Birchmere is more of an "indie" or acoustic place. Really good acoustics, good lines of sight, but not really set up for a rock show. Over the last couple of years, they've branched out though....Vai played there in 2007. Living Colour is playing there tonight. I hadn't been there before but I'll be back.



The Show

I got to the venue early so I got a great table pretty much front and center about 20 feet from the stage. Some things I noticed while waiting for the show to start:

  • No drum kit
  • The 15" Twin Reverb combo was on the front line of the stage pointed at the audience...was going to be a loud night
  • There was a piano onstage. wtf?
  • There's also a pair of chairs onstage front and center with mic stands in front of them. also, wtf?
The lights go down, and Dick comes out with his son Jimmy with acoustic guitars. Huh? So Fender is working with the Dale's on a couple of acoustic signature guitars. 3" deep bodies, all mahogany, two pickguards. Dick's is kind of a small single cut mini-dreadnaught body style while Jimmy's is more of a full sized dreadnaught body. Dick spent some time talking about sound waves and molecular structures in explaining how he wanted the guitar designed and why it sounded the way it did. Kind of a commercial, I guess, but I can't find the guitars anywhere so I don't know if they can actually be bought or if they're short runs for the Dale's.

If I had to describe the show in one word, it would be "fun." They could hear the audience really well from the stage, so there was a lot of interaction with the audience. Dick, ever the legend led the show and Jimmy sometimes struggled to keep up. While Jimmy's a darn good player himself, but when Dick starts improvising, he had a real hard keeping up with the changes...to the point of occasionally rolling his eyes and putting his guitar down til Dick came back to earth.

The show itself was interesting. In between songs, Dick talked a lot. About healthy lifestyle, his cancer, teaching music, raising a teenager, the good old days, how evil record companies are, etc. He explained scales and how to improvise in them (on the piano, by having the audience pick 4 notes out of the Cmaj scale to stay within), explained how his sense of rhythm comes from being a drummer before being a guitar player. I learned a lot more than I expected for a concert.

What about the music? Well, there was a lot. Even playing acousticly, it was lout and fast. Dick's not as fast as he used to be with the tremelo picking, but it didn't matter. He rocked it out. He played all of the songs you'd expect...Pipeline, Nitro, Taco Wagon, Haji, Mr Peppermint Man, Misirilou...and some unexpected stuff....country tunes (I recognized Ring of Fire from Johnny Cash) and some other stuff I didn't recognize.

The show went a bit over 2 hours. I had a great time. My wife had a great time and she didn't really know much about Dick Dale.

After the show, Dick and Jimmy set up at a table and signed autographs and sat for pictures. It was a big line, so there wasn't much time to interact, but I got my Signed Stuff and a picture, so it worked out.

21 Jul 2009
For fans of the king of surf guitar, he's on tour and his son Jimmy's opening. Didn't notice this in time for the US west coast, but he's got a couple more dates coming up on the east coast. I'll be at the stop at the Birchmere in Virginia on 29 Aug.

http://www.dickdale.com/dates.html
9 Jun 2009
Here's something for y'all that I don't think I've seen anywhere else on the forum and maybe a bunch of you might not have caught it outside GMC because of where it came from...

MC Lars has a tune out there called "Guitar Hero Hero (Beating Guitar Hero Doesn't Make You Slash)" which is a common sentiment here, being a forum for guitar players. The video's goofy but hang with it....Paul Gilbert pops in for a pretty good solo about 3/4ths of thw way through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7V7BaRAy0k
2 May 2009
not sure if any of you guys are on Twitter, but with the Trivium fans out there, I thought I'd mention it...

Matthew Heafy is at http://twitter.com/matthewkheafy

Paolo's at http://twitter.com/TriviumPaolo/

There's a general band Twitter account at http://twitter.com/triviumofficial

The band feed is mostly for announcements. Matt and Paolo follow back and are pretty interactive which is prtty cool when a band will talk back to fans online like that I think.

25 Apr 2009
Video included.

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/exc...e-guitar-204375

http://www.mansons.co.uk/shopping/categori...s/mb1-standard/

I've been fascinated by this guitar since the first time I saw a video of Bellamy use his custom version. Tele style body. BareKnuckle Naibiomb in the bridge, Fernandes sustainer in the neck position and a Korg KAOSS pad behind the bridge. The KAOSS pad sends MIDI control messages to your software to control...whatever. Too bad it's like $4k. There was a thread a couple of days ago about expensive vs inexpensive guitars...here's an expensive guitar I'd buy if I could. Basically what you're paying for here is a really pro mod (I've seen some ugly DIY attempts at this) in a really nice guitar.

The vide demos show it controlling software amps and effects. But it might be able to control anything else by MIDI. I know my Peavey Transformer pedals just send MIDI data to the amp to control it. There are likely other better amps that do the same.

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Comments
Pedja Simovic
Congrats on your next round in Guitar Idol Scott , wonderful entry!
4 Jan 2009 - 20:14
rokchik
Happy Birthday Scott :)
12 May 2008 - 0:03

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