Ben Jones

Digging more, I've found some more old recordings, and wanted to share them... Hopefully you'll smile as much as I did upon finding them.

These are a bunch of recordings from (much) younger days, when I was a part of a barbershop quartet called "Perfect 4th," with friends Cody Whitlock (Tenor), John Muir (Baritone) and Andy Isbell (Bass). This was our first ever performance. We only performed one other time, if my memory serves me correctly. These are truly "rare" recordings!

Good morning! Welcome to my weekend. It's a brisk Tuesday morning in San Francisco, and I've decided to start my day with a post here.

I have some out-of-town followers that work "normal hours" (what's normal anyway???) who would like to know just why it is that Tuesday is my weekend. Well, here you go. I'll break down a typical week in the life of Ben for you here.

My week starts on Wednesday. Most days, I wake up, eat breakfast and work out (that's probably not true - we all work out less than we would like to...), listening to whatever podcasts I haven't listened to yet. I warm up in the shower or at the piano, and try to get some practicing in, which doesn't always happen. (A sidenote: my father always says that the most difficult thing about your twenties is finding the time to continue practicing your craft. It's very easy to let oneself ride on the work one did in conservatory... Counter that with what most conservatory students and teachers will tell you: We all finally learn to sing/play/perform once we're out of conservatory. Huh. Someone's lying here... [Sidenote to the sidenote: For a great article about conservatory life and what it entails, click here.])

In the afternoons, I'll read or take care of any office business that was left undone on previous days. There's great sun both on the couch in the living room and through the West-facing office window of my San Francisco apartment, so at some point I'll usually try to settle in with a good book in the afternoon. Otherwise, it's out for coffee and errands. Each day is different, but follows this general schedule: careful diligence in the mornings, energy conserved in the afternoons, and then performances or rehearsals in the evenings. Of course, if Beach Blanket Babylon is doing a rewrite, daytime rehearsals will get in the way of everything, and I'm off to North Beach for an afternoon with my favorite cast. This schedule took a bit of getting used to, but I'm still up with the sun most days, and trying my best to get the most out of this great city while I'm here.

St. Dominics Church

Show Boat concert from last week was reviewed in the Chronicle. Read the article here.

Saw Seal perform awhile back in the Bay Area, and I gotta say, I was impressed. I've broken down the concert into parts, and I'll discuss each here:

Music:
Seal has appealed to me since college, when I would "pregame" while listening to Seal and other artists with upbeat songs. I like his songwriting, but it's really his style that pervades even in the covers he does. This was no different at his live concert. I think it was the third song when an extended brass riff led to a silence, broken by his voice: "This is a man's world..."

...and the audience lost it. It was a well-planned and well-executed moment in live entertainment -- something for which I have a great deal of respect.

He performed a bunch of songs that night from his new album, "Soul." I have since downloaded and familiarized myself with it. It's a pretty good album of covers from the soul era in American music. There are alot of safe choices on the album, and it's not exactly as long as I would have expected, but it represents his vocal and musical taste and style well.

Visual Experience:
The concert was performed by Seal and a band of three. There were video screens behind the four, and multiple platforms for them to perform from and jump on and off of. Seal's microphone stand was an architecturally beautiful piece of curved metal. What most struck me, though, was Seal's performance. He acted the lyrics more than any other pop artist I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few. One got the impression that the lyrics he wrote were also deeply felt, and that he wanted the audience to come away from the concert with new ammunition to use in the fights for Seal's favorite issues of the day... It's difficult not to be political these days, I suppose. But sometimes correlations between the sixties and now are just too much to think about while you're trying to enjoy a concert.

Wardrobe:
Seal was dressed neatly: tailored black jeans with a white button-down, striped tie and tailored vest. For his encore, he removed the tie and unbuttoned the buttons of the shirt down to the vest's collar. The sleeves of the shirt were messily rolled throughout. I really liked his outfit, and I've since yearned for the opportunity to wear something similar onstage. It seemed a sensible and comfortable choice for a long live appearance.