One of my all time favorite Redding artists passed away recently at age 53. Damn. 53.
Like much of Redding music, Slam was hard to categorize. I won’t try. Jim Dyar does a good job of it at this post over at A News Cafe. Blogger Marc Beauchamp pointed me to Slam’s MySpace page, where you can listen to some recordings, and which will hopefully remain available. I can say the times I met him, he impressed me as a truly genuine character, and that’s a compliment of the highest order. He was a creature of the stage, and could be found playing live all over the Northstate whenever possible, often with his band, the Groove Palookas, laying down some funky beats to rocking audiences. A skilled musician, with his own very original style, in an artform where originality is a most prized attribute. He had a great many enthusiastic followers. RIP doesn’t seem appropriate to this energetic player. I’d prefer to believe he’s just appearing on a stage somewhere else. Given the relatively small local music scene, I’d always hoped to jam with Slam at some point. But it looks like that’ll have to wait until we meet again on the other side of the stage curtain. Our heart goes out to his family, friends, fans, and Groove Palookas everywhere.
Music from Redding’s Planetarium past – Set 2
I posted the first set of music from Craig Padilla‘s mid 90’s live show a few days ago here. I believe we called the shows “Impulse-Live from Space,” but I couldn’t find any of our promotional materials. I did find a photograph I took of Craig in the Schreder Planetarium (using film back then!) with the famous horizontal axis mirror ball in the background. Most mirror balls rotate vertically, but for our planetarium shows, lights swirled on the dome from front to back. Pretty intense, as I recall it, heh. Anyway, here’s the second set. About 47 minutes. Captured like a dusty photograph, a slice of time gone by.
Planetarium2 by SkipMurphy
Impulse, Live from Space by Craig Padilla. Craig on synths and guitar, Dave Barnett (Montuno Salad) on drums and percussion, Al Mires (Music Max) on electric guitar, and Skip Murphy on more synths, lasers and lighting.
Rails -new ambient work
Feeling creative over Christmas, I recorded this ambient piece I titled Rails. A little over 8 minutes. I hope you enjoy it.
Rails by SkipMurphy
A musical gift from the Planetarium past
This isn’t related to Christmas, but I recently completed this project from the archives I’ve been editing, and so I’m putting it up. Sometime in the late 1990s, Craig Padilla produced a series of music events at the Schreder Planetarium in Redding. We played as a 4 piece band in darkness, while special lighting effects and the stars wheeled overhead on the dome. Along with Craig playing synths and guitar, I played more synthesizers, and ran some lighting. Al Mires of Music Max in Palo Cedro played electric guitar, and Dave Barnett of local band Montuno Salad played drums and percussion. I have offered some of the individual tracks before, but this is the first time I have presented the entire first set as a whole. It runs just over 40 minutes. This set of music is different when heard in totality, rather than as individual tracks.
Planetarium Show Live (Set 1) by SkipMurphy
I think it holds up very well over time. Hearing it again today , this rainy Christmas day, I am struck by just how ambitious the whole project was. It’s a fairly complex composition, played in near total darkness. As any live recording, it has some imperfections, and since it was recorded to analog 2 track, there’s no remixing. It is what it is. I feel proud of the effort, and I relish the artistic eloquence we brought to the planetarium venue. Thanks to Craig for putting the shows together, and for letting me contribute to his unique and original music. Thanks to Al and Dave as well. It was hard work, but we had fun too. Give it a listen and see what you think.
The spoken word art at the conclusion is Craig’s long departed grandmother, taken from a cherished message machine tape, speaking to us all from the across the divide between this world and the next:
Oh fudge and damn
I forgot
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Stick this machine
in your maple surple
That’s prose
This is Mom
Just being a little silly on Valentine’s Day
Love y’all.
Although it’s not specifically Christmas music, I hope you enjoy the mix. I submit that it’s the indigenous music of 21st Century Redding; it’s ReallyRedding.
Live recording -Craig Padilla’s “Sundial Bridge”
Here’s a live recording of Sundial Bridge by Craig Padilla. It was recorded on the patio of the cafe of the south end of the bridge. It’s about 20 minutes of symphonic electronic music. It starts off quietly, until it begins to soar. I accompanied Craig, and ran audio. There is no mic on the audience, but you do hear our voices briefly at the very end.
Sundial bridge2 by SkipMurphy 
The Sundial Bridge has arguably become the symbol of Redding CA. The architect for the bridge is a world famous artist named Santiago Calatrava, although I don’t see this particular work listed on his website. I haven’t looked through the whole site.
The folks at the host Turtle Bay Museum seemed happy to have us play there. The venue was really hot (thermal hot, not swinging hot) and it’s not acoustically great for either listeners or players. And for an art museum, the staff seemed really unimpressed that world famous musician Craig Padilla had composed a complete symphonic music composition named after the bridge, just for the occasion. Like, “Yeah, that’s nice.”
Anyway, I came across the recording in the studio, and thought I’d share it with the world again. At least, that part of the world that wasn’t at the event. Like any live recording, it has some issues, but I think the spirit of the muse comes across intact. See what you think.
New music piece inspired by a photo
Swaddled by SkipMurphy Somebody plopped this little human in front of me while I was at work in the office. I don’t know who it is. Not thinking much about it, I took a picture with my iPhone. Later, seeing the image inspired me to try and capture the musical feelings I got from looking at the image. Like some art, I’m not sure I got what I wanted. So this remains a musical sketch. But art can be surprising. Perhaps like this baby:
It will grow on me over time.
It may not be finished. Whatever finished means.
Jonsi in concert
Craig Padilla told me there was going to be an extraordinary video concert simulcast yesterday on NPR, of all places. Jonsi is the lead singer of Sigur Ros, a big favorite of mine. The concert did not disappoint. Hey, it’s still available to see for today only, at the NPR site. Well worth a view. Jonsi integrates art and music in a really different manner. Again like yesterday, its not ReallyRedding, but it is Really Interesting, and in the greater scheme of things, an online concert simulcast has no actual geographic location. The wolf and deer imagery was genuinely spectacular, and the final tune with the storm imagery had me by the throat. Jonsi’s singing is pretty unique. Check it out.
Eye of the Storm
Here’s a recording from 15 years ago. Craig Padilla was asked to make a soundtrack for a video to be aired on Redding’s cable access channel. Local video artist Namaste had edited video footage he had taken of stormclouds moving into the valleys and mountains of southeastern Oregon and the Mt Shasta area into a longform video for his abstract series titled Meditate On This. In the studio, Craig came up with a few sequence structures on his ESQ-1, and then we riffed on a few musical ideas together about how it should go. Then we just turned on the (analog) tape recorder. It was played live, one-pass. No edits.
I regarded the piece as a “throwaway” sort of one-off. In fact, I didn’t even listen to it after we recorded it. Later, after a few auditions, the music just seemed to grow on me. It’s spare and stark, like the video imagery, but it was a surprisingly appropriate evocation of the high desert and sky. I don’t have the video, and I think I only saw it once, but the music remains. An artistic and beautiful reminder of an era and an artistic endeavor. Craig ultimately thought highly enough of the music to make it the centerpiece of his first professionally produced CD on the See Peace label in 1996, where it became the title track. BTW. Of the two of us, Craig is far and away the one most responsible for this music. I played some parts, and it definitely wouldn’t be the same without my contributions, but this is truly Craig’s talent and inspiration in full glory. This CD is still in print. The photo is one I took in Lassen Park last year.
Eye of the Storm by SkipMurphy
A time capsule of indigenous music from 20th century Northern California. It’s ReallyRedding.
Agate Beach -new music
Dusted off the instruments and put up a new track. Reflecting on light surf I recorded on the NorthCoast. About 20 minutes of coastal ambience for meditation and study.
I am going to try and load more of my music at a page in the right sidebar. Hope you enjoy the listening as much as I did the creation.
Agate Beach
Agate Beach1 by SkipMurphy
First ever Sundial Music Festival and Rib Cook Off
Erin took a few shots of the event on Saturday at the Convention Center. It looks like there were a lot of vendors. Between her shots and the image at the RS, I saw no musicians as subjects, so we’ll assume the food was the center of attention. Looks tasty.
