Nigel Sifantus » Aaron Dugan http://www.nigelsifantus.com Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:05:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The Vault has been opened! http://www.nigelsifantus.com/new-material/988 http://www.nigelsifantus.com/new-material/988#comments Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:05:11 +0000 Nigel http://www.nigelsifantus.com/?p=988 During my days in NYC from when I arrived in1998 until around 2005, I used to constantly travel with my mini disc player and audio-technica stereo microphone to capture every bit of my musical life. I recorded everything from amazing class rehearsals at the New School University with some of the most amazing and diverse musicians I had the fortune to collaborate with, live performances with all my bands of the time (Spaceship, Sevenseventeen, Grandfather Ridiculous, L Maestro Presents), and other random concerts and jam sessions. I kept piling up a collection of these discs, some neatly labeled, some not at all, and usually used them to listen to once and analyze what I had just done for musical education purposes. Even though I generally cast them aside in a box, I knew that at some point I would have to revisit this material.

Well at this point the Mini-Disk player is a technology of the past, my disks had been collecting dust for years, and my last working player  long been busted from carrying it in my stick bag where ever I went. Recently I opened this box and knew I had to dive in but first I had to get a hold of a player. Enter the wonders of eBay and the next thing I knew I had a great component player for around $40 and I was off and running.

This post is an initial collection of my findings. I’ve got some great vintage Grandfather Ridiculous performances, jazz sessions with some amazing students I was going to school with at the time including Marcus Strickland, John Lee, Richard Cruz, Reid Taylor, Joe Ashlar and others, and some live performances I have re-mixed that I had totally forgotten about.

Enjoy and check back later for more choice additions.

Nigel Sifantus – “The Vault” Recordings from 1999-2005 by Progtronica

]]> http://www.nigelsifantus.com/new-material/988/feed 0 Spooky Halloween classic: “Exoskeleton” Live in philly 10/27/07 http://www.nigelsifantus.com/live/794 http://www.nigelsifantus.com/live/794#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:32:49 +0000 Nigel http://www.nigelsifantus.com/?p=794
exoI figured this was the perfect time to revisit this classic video taken at a Halloween gig 2 years ago with New School University “Super Group” Exoskeleton which features Aaron Dugan on guitar (sevenseventeen, Matisyahu, guitar god in the making) Jason Fraticelli on Bass (Cell theory, L Maestro Presents, Grandfather, and 2/3rds of all other bands out of Philly) Brian Marsella on keys (caveman, beat the donkey, the Flail and my old “super trio’s class with Lee Anne Ledgerwood) and myself on drums. The band name was inspired by the Halloween party scene in “the Karate Kid” where the Cobra Kai kids all had on matching “exoskeleton” costumes when they beat up Daniel son. When we got the opportunity to actually play on Halloween, we decided to make a theme of it and dress in costumes as close as we could find to the ones in the movie and improvise a new soundtrack to the “Karate Kid” while the music was playing in the background.

Warning… This is some pretty weird wild stuff and the sound quality is not the greatest but it is amusing none the less. What we learned from the night is that the “karate Kid is actually kind of a long movie when you try to play continuously throughout. Once the fight scene in the end came up we were pretty much exhausted.

Happy Halloween!!!!

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