LAMA Spotlight: Local Eats

So you just aced your drumming exam. You’re exhausted and hungry! You are tired of Burger King so it’s time to check out other choices around campus and Pasadena in particular. We’re going to highlight a few local shops that keep us healthy and won’t break the bank, plus they are nearby! We also surveyed the LAMA Facebook page and added additional suggestions below:

1. Saladang – 363 South Fair Oaks Avenue  Pasadena, CA 91105 

Distance from campus: 30 ft 

Authentic Thai food just a few feet from campus? You KNOW that we eat here about once a week. From the fried tofu to the Stir-Fried Eggplant it is hard to go wrong here. For you vegetarians out there make sure you notice that their vegetarian Dishes are prepared with Fish Sauce so if you are allergic you might want to request if they can prepare it without.

Check out what other eaters have to say about Saladang on their Yelp page here.

2. Porta Via Italian Foods – 1 W California Blvd #312 Pasadena, CA 91105 

Distance from campus: .3 miles

Porta Via describes it like this on their website “At Porta Via, our passion is creating delicious foods inspired by the vibrant flavors of Italy, the Mediterranean and California in a modern café-style atmosphere that’s as warm and welcoming as an old neighborhood market. Our ingredients are fresh, our sandwiches handcrafted, and our soups made from original family recipes.” We cannot say enough for the atmosphere it really does make you feel like you are in a hip Italian cafe. You may get swayed by the delicious sandwiches but if you are health conscious you must try a “make it like you want it” salad. They give it to you in a large bowl and it is scrumptious.

Check out what other eaters have to say about Porta Via on their Yelp page here.

3. Zushi – 133 W California Blvd Pasadena, CA 91105

Distance from campus: .4 miles

Is there ever a bad time for sushi? In our world there isn’t. Located just .4 miles from campus Zushi will give you your fill of Avocado rolls, Edamame, and any kind of sushi you can think of!  Japanese food is often known as one of the healthiest cuisines ever. Bands that tour Japan often come back quite a few pounds lighter. Bonus tip: If you like spice load up your sushi with Wasabi to clean your palate!

Student/Alumni suggestions, in no particular order:

• Philly’s
• Burger Continental
• Tender Greens
• King Taco
• Lucky Boy
• Dog Haus
• Vince’s Deli
• Islands
• Dona Rosa
• Taco Trucks (walk outside LAMA’s front entrance and look left)
• Rubio’s
• Gerlachs
• Pita Pita
• Zankou Chicken
• Heirlooms

There you go LAMA students! Just writing this article got us pretty hungry so we are going to take a walk over to Porta Via and grab us a salad. If you get a chance to check out any of these places we would love to see your pics — post them on our Facebook wall or Tweet us. Happy eating!

-LAMA Staff

LAMA at NAMM!

NAMM is one of the largest music product trade shows in the world, founded in 1901. It is held every January in Anaheim, California, USA, at the Anaheim Convention Center. We won’t be exhibiting, however, the LAMA family of instructors and grads will be their in full force for various projects and performances. Check out some of your instructors performing:

DAVE HILL

Dave will be doing doing two performances at NAMM.  The Dave Hill Group will perform on Friday Night, JAN 25th at the Sheraton – 7:20 pm on the  Jazz Stage.  The Sheraton is located at 1855 South Harbor Boulevard • Anaheim, CA 92802. And then, with “The Scott Wilkie Band” …on Saturday night, JAN 26th at the Sheraton – 10 pm on the Jazz Stage Both gigs are free to the public. Come check out some great contemporary Jazz Fusion!

LYNN FANELLI 

Neillie  is singing background vocals at NAMM on Friday, Jan 25th at 5:00 pm for the Living Legends Concert at the Grand Plaza stage. This is her 3rd year singing with the Legends Concert. Last year she sang with Bobby Kimball from Toto, The Spencer Davis Group. This year she will be singing with Chuck Negron, singer for Three Dog Night, Dennis Tufano, singer for the Buckinghams, Robin McAuley, singer for Survivor and The Michael Schenker Group, Terry Ilous, singer from Great White and XYZ, Richie Castellano, guitarist for Blue Oyster Cult, Nico McBrain, drummer for Iron Maiden, Frankie Banali, drummer for Quiet Riot, Alan White, drummer for Yes and The Plastic Ono Band, and Marty Grebb, sax player for Bonnie Raitt and Chicago, among others.

Here is a photo from last year. In the photo is Robin McAuley from Survivor, Janelle Sadler from Natalie Cole’s band, Terry Ilous from Great White, Dennis Tufano from the Buckinghams and a host of other people.

BRAD RABUCHIN

Brad will be playing with Country artist Larry Bagby Fri 8:30-9 as part of the NAMM Carvin/Mapex show at Hotel Menage 1221 South Harbor Boulevard, Anaheim, CA (714) 758-0900.

HUGO MENDOZA

Hugo will be at NAMM this year working as Product Specialist for Mixware. They will be demoing one of Electrix’s new product called TWEAKER all day in the booth at demo stations. The booth is Mixware LLC Booth# 6714 (Hall A) -Reloop, Electrix, UDG, Monkey-Banana.

ANDREW MURDOCK

Andrew will be representing Kemper Profiling amplifiers and Evertune guitar bridges.

Have a great NAMM everyone! If you run into anyone from LAMA say HI!

-Team LAMA

Pandora Wants to be Your BFF, Musicians.

Pandora does not have the best reputation with musicians. Remember when they petitioned Congress to pay musicians less royalties? However, at this year’s CES founder Tim Westergren is taking baby steps to try and change that reputation. What’s first? Tour support.

According to this article in the LA Times Westergren:

“…talked about Internet radio as a means to generate income for performing artists (who don’t get paid at all by over-the-air stations) and insights. In particular, he touted Pandora’s ability to help artists figure out where to tour and promote their live shows to a receptive audience.”

It seems the idea is that sometime in the future Pandora could provide a map showing where your music is enjoyed and streamed the most across the world, then the musician could plan tours and marketing around this data. Google Analytics for streaming perhaps? Our biggest problem with this is that there is no concrete evidence that they are actually working on this. Why was this not implemented years ago! We had Pandora streaming during the Bush administration and you are just thinking about something like this?

With cloud storage services, Spotify and Google Music taking over, we appreciate that Pandora is trying to get back into the good graces of musicians but they have a lot of work to do!

-LAMA Staff

LAMA Alumni Update: Huba Kelemen’s (Guitar) Song Hits #1

Huba Keleman

LAMA Guitar grad (1996) Huba Kelemen has some great news to share! His song Daydream/Vadonatuj Erzes performed by Radics Gigi a Hungarian Idol winner – is currently holding the number one spot in his home country. You can see a news article on it here (Huba is also in the second half of this video clip). Huba says, “Thank you all for the love, support and inspiration! Miss all of your faces, happy holidays and can’t wait to see you all again in the new year.”

We are excited too see you soon Huba! Follow Huba on Twitter here.

-LAMA Staff

Indie Bands Get Creative with Instagram

Indie band The Plastics Revolution of Tres Marías, Mexico, took their song “Invasión” and put it to 1,905 Instagram photos for a fun and cheerful stop-motion music video (watch it below). Very creative! Another twist where an artist used Instagram as a vehicle for promotion came last year from Ellie Goulding, who asked her fans to help create a debut music video for her upcoming album. She used 1,200 Instagram photos submitted by her fan base for the song “Anything Could Happen.”

Do you have a presence on Instagram and what are you doing to engage your fans? Also, don’t forget to follow LAMA on Instagram (@lamainstagram).

-LAMA Staff

Music Notation App to Revolutionize Teaching?

What if music students could still learn how to write music by hand, but quickly turn that into computerized notation? The people at @ThinkMusicTech say this is very real thanks to a new app that we don’t have many details for just yet but more updates are coming soon. Here’s a preview — we’ll keep an eye on the developments but we are interested!

[http://youtu.be/66AEYRXiVnA]

-LAMA Staff

5 Music Questions We Want Answered in 2013

Here are five questions we have for the music industry this year:

1. Will consumers take to Sonos?

A careful marketing campaign where promotional copies of the state of the art audio hardware were sent to key influencer’s means people are raving about Sonos. Sonos is music hardware that streams your digital music with HiFi sound and has no sound loss over wireless. It reminds us of the buzz surrounding Spotify when it first appeared in Europe. Bob Lefsetz talked about wirelessly connecting his system, then we heard Howard Stern’s producer Gary Dell’Abate eschewing it’s merits. With the economy back on the upswing and people buying homes again, upwardly mobile music fans now have the money to bring their homes into the musical 21st century. Will Sonos catch on or will an old stalwart like a Bose or Sony or Apple TV-like system beat them for the win?

2. Will the synchronicity of the internet and your car catch on?

Yes, we know that you can hook your smartphone up to your radio but we are talking about seamless integration here folks. Ford was on to something with Sync, but it’s reviews are mixed and overall user-friendliness is questionable. When you can drive your car and dial up your favorite Pandora stations or Spotify list, does that mean terrestrial radio is shaking in its boots? Probably not, but with distracted driving at an all time high, and laws coming into place, successful integration is desirable. We’ll see if it catches on more in  2013.

3.  Will Apple step into the streaming game?

It is frequently mentioned in business that the first person to the game is not always the victor. Many have noticed the trends that digital paid downloads are on the downtrend while streaming is on the up and up. There is no doubt that Apple will step into the streaming game but could it be this year? Right now we’ve got Spotify and Google Play — has your life changed as much as ours by syncing a Spotify starred playlist to an iPad so you can listen to two gigs of music on an airplane? So will Apple take the Spotify format and enter the streaming world? Only time will tell…

4. Will YouTube reign supreme?

YouTube continues to be the number one destination for people to listen to music. Just over 5 years ago, what if we told you people would listen to music more on an online video site called YouTube than on radio, MTV and CDs combined? It’s incredible — now we have Psy and his one billion plus video views. When Spotify does not have a live version we switch to YouTube and vise versa. It certainly SEEMS like YouTube is not going anywhere for a while.

5. Are DJs the new rock star?

We have all seen the numbers. Will EDM continue to rule the live market? It’s Electronic HUGE for live music sales, especially in 2012. The bigger players in the concert industry like Live Nation have even taken notice. But some fans are questioning…check out this article, Is America killing EDM?

There you have it music fans! Do you want these questions answered as well? Or are there some we missed? Write your predictions in the comments.

-LAMA Staff

LAMA Bass Instructor Spotlight: Andre Berry

The LAMA bass department is something special and that’s in large part due to our wonderful collection of faculty members assembled by Bass Department Chair Jerry Watts Jr. We’d like to feature the bass instructors on this blog over the next couple weeks, beginning with Andre Berry.

Originally from Cleveland, OH, Andre moved to LA in 1985 to attend the Los Angeles City College Music Program, where he studied under Doc Simpson and Woody James. After four years of classes, he landed his first big road gig in 1989 with the Busboys. Andre then went on to join A&M Records recording artist Total Eclipse. Since then, he has performed and/or recorded with Dave Koz, George Duke, Warren Hill, Marcus Miller, Danny Jung, Jeffrey Osbourne, Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, Mindi Abair, Dave Benoit, The Brothers Johnson, Rick Braun, Peter White, Jeff Golub, Steve Ferrone, A Tribe Called Quest, Paul Jackson, Jr., and many others.

Andre offers playing tips on the LAMA youtube channel as well:

We are so proud to have Andre as a member of LAMA. To see information on all our other Bass faculty members please visit here. Watch Andre in action:

-LAMA Staff

30 Shredders in One Guitar Solo

Happy New Year all! Here’s a fun video to start your day, and the title speaks for itself. Enjoy!

-LAMA Staff