It’s a good reminder. Everything comes at a cost.

Nashville-based entertainment firm, The Lowry Agency, has officially announced the addition of guitar virtuoso Jon Finn (www.jonfinn.com) to their client booking roster.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jon Finn
PRLog (Press Release) – Feb 01, 2012 –
Nashville, TN – Nashville-based entertainment firm, The Lowry Agency, has officially announced the addition of guitar virtuoso Jon Finn (www.jonfinn.com) to their client booking roster.

“We’ve been together as a band for more than 20 years. Four best friends hanging out and doing what comes naturally. Our goal is simple: Make music that we like. We’ve wanted to tour for a long time and have gotten many requests from fans over the years. Up to now, our approach has been to travel directly to an area where someone local is wiling to help us since we’ve been self-managed all this time. We’re very excited to be working with Dave Lowry Agency to assemble our first “real” tour. See you on the road!” says Finn about working with The Lowry Agency.

A guitarist since age six, Jon Finn has been a professional musician for most of his life. Joining the guitar faculty at Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1988, he started the Jon Finn Group later that same year. To date, they have released three CDs “Don’t Look So Serious” with Legato Records in1994, “Wicked” with SEP Records in 1998 and “Bull in a China Shop” in 2010.

For over three years, Jon wrote a monthly instructional feature for a national magazine called Guitar. Jon has also authored several books for Mel Bay Publications including “Advanced Modern Rock Guitar Improvisation,” One Guitar, Many Styles” and two others with more in the works.

Finn has played guitar for the national touring companies of many contemporary musical theater productions such as Rent, Aida, Mamma Mia, Grease, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Copacabana, and many others. Today Finn frequently performs and records with the Boston Pops Orchestra, and has been involved in a plethora of concerts and recording sessions, including 6 CDs (two of which were Grammy nominated), 8 US concert tours, and one tour in Asia

Article posted on PRlog.com

I took it down. The spirit of the “Rant Page” at the time was to write about things that frustrated me in a manner that might be fun to read. I didn’t really mean any harm, but some people didn’t agree with me.

Now we have Reality Shows on TV. If you haven’t seen one, it’s supposed to be a glimpse in to someone else’s life in an “unscripted/unedited” manner. The cameras can film anything and broadcast anything. The shows’ participants get a boatload of cash for the invasion of privacy.

Have you ever seen a reality show that actually looks like reality?

How stupid do we seem? Imagine explaining a reality show to an alien. Would the alien take away the lesson: “In order to be famous and successful in the United States, you must be utterly self-absorbed, and frighteningly dim-witted.”???

I hear there’s a new one in the works: “Teen Brain Surgeon” (featuring Snooky’s half-sister),

The pilot episode is tentatively titled: “Ooops”

The second episode is called: “Ooops I did it again.”

Third one: “I look awesome in scrubs, but the blood ruins it.”

The trip was amazing on every level. Quito has an elevation of more than 9,000 feet because it sits in the middle of the Andes mountain range. It took a few days to adjust to the altitude. But the people were amazing. Many spoke English. I could go on an on. But mostly, the photos tell the story.

Quito Ecuador October 2011

Russ Costa – Guitar, vox
Jon Finn – Guitar
Ric (of Gibralter) Naistadt – Bass
Steve Finn – Drums

There’s a new version in the works too: “Ultra-GuitarHero” model has an extra knob marked “asshole” Funny though. If you turn up the beer knob, the asshole knob goes up automatically!

But think a little bit more about how it happened. These soldiers are snipers. Trained to kill the enemy from thousands of feet away. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never killed anyone. I have no concept of what it’s like to have that on my conscience. Even if they did it in the name of protecting our country, they’ve still killed people. I imagine that the only people who can relate to living with that might be other snipers.

If we took these men out of the military (in our imaginations) and put them in to mainstream society, we’d label them crazy. We’d lock them out & throw away the key. But we didn’t. Rather, we spent millions training them, getting them the equipment, knowledge and support they need so they can do what they do.

If we judge them as heartless, savage killers with zero compassion, remember. We did this together. The blood of our enemy is on all of our hands.

I long for a day when we live in a world where snipers are obsolete. But because they’re not, I’m grateful that someone’s willing to do a job like that. I’m not.

There are some chords that can be called several different things. For example this chord:

-5-
-5-
-5-
-5-
-5-
-x-

can be called many things:
D9sus4
Am7/D
D11
C6/D
among them. Generally, I choose the name based on context, and who I’m trying to convey it to.

Part of the challenge is that if the chord has more than 4 notes, sometimes you have to make judgements as to what notes you play vs. which you leave out.

For me, learning about it is ongoing. What about you? How do you approach naming chords? How do you approach it if you have to leave notes out? How do you decide?