Electric Giudeccaland

Other than the city itself, one of the most wonderful things about the year-and-a-half I lived in Venice without a 9-to-5 job was the time I had to explore personal passions. Precious time without a clock roaring in my ears. I’m blessed or cursed, depending on your perspective, with many abnormally compelling interests. One is music. I play a bunch of instruments, and dragged a half-ton of gear with me to Venice including some guitars, a long, heavy digital piano, some amps, mics, and a few book boxes of cables, jacks, clips and God knows what else.

For the first time in a long time, I was really able to improve my chops, digging into old blues and barrelhouse piano bits and Hendrix guitar licks I was never able to crack before.

I also cranked out a few “mash-ups” … sliced-up snips of songs that, when smooshed together, become completely different, unique songs in their own right. It’s a kind of audio collaging that I first learned by watching my chum, the celebrated old-school hip-hop remixer, Steinski.

These days, there are amazing audio programs like Ableton’s Live  that let you slice and dice like a nuclear Veg-o-matic. But this was 1998, and I was then driving a shiny Mac Powerbook 3400 at a blistering 240mhz with a long-discontinued program called Soundedit 16. My cell phone – no joke – has a faster processor and runs more complex software.

Anyway, for your downloading pleasure, here’s a mash-up called All In My Toes that I created in the state-of-the-art Electric Giudeccaland studios (seen below) in Venice (my living room). It combines The Doors tune “Maggie M’Gill” with an a cappella song called “Go Down Old Hannah” by American bluesmaster, Leadbelly  (Huddie Ledbetter). There's an interesting and highly-compatible collision between The Doors in LA circa 1970 and the then-inmate Leadbelly recorded in 1933 at Angola State Prison in Louisiana. I blow some blues harp on the recording to create a little bridge, but otherwise, it’s the Doors and Huddie, duking it out. (Right click on the link, and "save as" to download to your PC. It's about 3 MB.)

The control room at Electric Giudeccaland

Interesting coda: through a connection at National Public Radio, this recording found its way to The Doors keyboardist, Ray Manzarak, who surprised me with a phone call and some very nice words. Ray baby … I’m ready when you are.

Comments

[Sedulia]

I love Venice, I love your blog, it makes me miss la Serenissimma so much....thanks! you will permit ze leetle correction, non? It's GIU decca, not GUI decca (which would be pronounced with a hard G). Più bella, quoi!
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How mortifying, up there in the title of the post and everything. So I did a global search through the whole weblog, and found only one other such spasm (out of 180 CORRECT spellings ... good boy). I felt so dirty, but I am now clean. All fixed.

By the way, it's "La Serenissima", not "Serenissimma".

N.

[Shannon]

Awesome song Norman! How did your neighbors feel about your projects? :)

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Except for blowing the harp, it was all headphones the clattering of keys. The guy next door was a trombone snorer, so he had no right to complain.

N.

[Sedulia]

Serenissima, I mean...pride goeth before a fall! Next time I'll check on Google too!

[Mike]

Excellent work! That was one of the better mash-ups I've ever heard.

[Pam]

MORE MORE MORE!!

OK, admittedly I'm a dawg for the blues--must've been those first visits to the Apollo and blues clubs in NYC, then practically a residency at the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago during college, and finally hanging out at the late John Lee Hooker's club here in San Francisco--but this sounds great! With your permission, it's going in the iPod!

It's interesting--I have some great blues pals in Italy: mostly Spoleto and Ravenna. Some of the most fun I've ever had is translating blues lyrics into Italian. Boy, does that tax the non-fluent speaker!
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One night, in bed at my apartment, I heard someone attempting a Leadbelly tune at some kind of party. So I brought some harps and crashed it. All blues. Lots of musicians and people ... a piano ... guitars ... and I switched around instruments. I felt like a God. The real American playing real blues. They wouldn't leave me alone!