Hi everyone,

I don't know why I've taken so long to make a video of this tune. In honor of the 20th anniversary of Stick Figures, here's "Charmed Life".

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2lb7SeMcjo[/youtube]

Of course any feedback you have about the look, sound, etc are deeply appreciated. I did my best to copy the sound of the CD, so it's just Stickup into StepABout into DAW.
The sun kept ducking in and out of the clouds, so there's some funny lighting changes as it poked through the blinds.

Hope you like it, and if you don't, well that's okay, too.

This tune is forever burned into my soul!

Dang I love this tune Greg!
Thanks for posting.
cheers,
kev

Really Nice Greg.

I can really hear how you have kept the spirit of the original arrangement and solo, while showing how your technique has improved over the years. Great examples of repeated notes and shifting. Nice subtle camera/editing work.

well done, enjoyed that one.
Brett

Awesome video, Greg. This tune was one of the first I heard on the Stick, and it's still a great arrangement.

I agree with Bret, and I think that this whole presentation is really a clear example for the
art of solo instrumental song craft. Why? Because the 'tension resolution sequence' is repeated both with the theme of the song and in the more subtle departures. It works in a funny way that good music does in that if you are sitting there analyzing the chords, shapes and movements and then you forget that you are doing that A small magic spell doth be setting here...

jRj

Greg,
if you close your eyes, you could swear Stick Figures was on.

IMHO, I think one of the toughest things is to play your crowd favorite after repeated playings and still make it fresh for both the performer and still meet the audience expectations -whose reference point is a CD you made 20 years ago. I believe in 20 more years when you are putting out your "Greatest Hits Package + One New Song", Charmed Life will still remain exciting and as if you heard it for the first time.

As the comments point out, it is a "Stairway to Heaven" for Stickists and right up there with "Elephant Talk", "Tone Eleven", "Captain's Daughter", " Parallel Galaxy" , "The Manifest" and "Waking the Day" * I'm sure our other pundits, poets and noisemakers on the forum have their favorites too! These are just some of mine.

Some selected highlights are:
2:16 cascading interplay chords were just beautiful
2:30 unexpected but pleasant surprise to hear an short passage featuring an impromptu bass solo using a repeated melody note for a rhythmic base.

Contained are great exemplars of repeated notes with alternating fingers, the melancholy vibrato at the end, beautiful muted bass parts without a piece of electrical tape to be found, and the final strum.

Thank you for posting a visual of this great song so we can see hand positioning, timbre choice and note placement. I never knew you slid up to the one note. I always played it fretted!

Charmed Life has a charmed life and still has the same exuberance "after all these beers" !
thanks,
Dave Brosky

*King Crimson (Tony Levin), Steve Adelson, Bob Culbertson, Emmett Chapman, Glenn Poorman, & Tom Griesgraber

I really, really like this piece. The new additions are nice and add new interest to the passage of the song, but the original, in my opinion, really stands out in your body of work. Well done Greg. Well done.

Thanks for all the kind comments everyone.

Walter, you may have hit on the reason why I never tried to video this before. It's hard to capture the magic of an improvised solo you really like over again. I did a few takes and this one came out the best, but I doubt I'll ever be able to come up with one as good as the one on the record again.

And Dave, I'm honored to have a tune in your pantheon of definitive Stick work. I'd add a couple of my own, Don Schiff's "Timeless", Guillermo Cides' "El Mundo Interior de los Planetas", Larry Tuttle's "Spanish Mice" from "Stick Night '99", Steve Hahn's "Harmonic Poem" and Rob Martino's "One Cloud".

Always love hearing this one.

Back before I started playing myself, my limited exposure to the Stick was Tony Levin and a local guy in a band called "The Brothers From Another Planet" who played it very sparingly and was a novice at best. After deciding to take the plunge I started perusing the internet for anything I could find and stumbled upon Vance Gloster's "StickWire" website which was a companion to the StickWire listserv. He had some samples of Stick music up there and this one caught my eye just because Vance described it as "Guaraldi-esque". It was a huge eye opener just because it was the first tune I'd heard that really used the whole instrument as a solo instead of low end in a band.

That was a moment that really changed my perception of what was going to be possible and what I was going to try and accomplish. All that and the first instrument wasn't even in my hands yet.

FWIW ... the second moment that came close to that one occurred one afternoon listening to Tom Griesbraber doing his now defunct weekly radio show of Stick recordings. He played the title track from Cides "Primitivo" and I sent him an email before the tune even ended asking "what the hell is THIS?". I ordered the CD as soon as I was done listening.