thanks danny for setting up the awesome night at cafe cordiale watching gregg bissonette play with some awesome cats including jeff babko from jimmy kimmel live.

yes, that’s gregg with a broken finger and you NEVER would’ve known the way he was playing!!!

the “celebrity” drummer crowd that showed up was pretty breathtaking… terry bozzio, GnR’s matt sorum, and ac/dc’s chris slade (who actually remembered me from our encounter at panchos!)

the amazing max roach showing his skills with the brushes…

had my first guitar lesson last night… MAN, my head is still spinning from all the beginner music theory stuff that was thrown at me… i have to go back to my notes to process it all, but the one thing that i left with was that i finally know what those dang numbers mean in chords like Dsus4, A9, and Bm7. haha!

i have a pretty cool “assignment” this week. i have to make a list of songs i want to study and analyze… i’m open to suggestions so leave them in the comments.

tickets go on sale through ticketmaster tomorrow at noon…
time to start buttering up the wife!

**update** it didn’t work… *sigh*

say hello to the newest addition to the family…

my new fender american vintage ‘62 strat in 3-tone sunburst, stella.

she was the product of over a year and a half of saving change, recycling bags of phil’s diet coke cans, and saved birthday and christmas money. ana’s been more than understanding about this “crazy” obsession of mine and continues to make small contributions for my lessons that are starting this monday.

speaking of lessons, my teacher is going to be fran banish, who i found through mccabe’s guitar shop in santa monica. turns out danny played with fran back in his rocker days. btw, got her setup at mccabe’s and matt there was awesome.