R.I.P. Jeff Healey

I just heard that just a few weeks before the release of a new album Jeff Healey died at the age of 41 from the effects of a rare form of cancer, called retinoblastoma, which he fought his entire life. He lost his eyesight from the disease at the age of one.

For the general public he was known as a blues-rock guitarist with his typical style of playing the guitar flat on his lap, but in a smaller circle he was also acknowledged as jazz musician. Besides the guitar he also played trumpet and clarinet and played in a jazz formation called the Jazz Wizards who played vintage jazz from the 1920s and 1930s.

It's a shame most of the good musicians die young. May he rest in peace. And if there is a Rock Walhalla I hope and I'm pretty sure he will be jamming with George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix.

I've added three videos from Jeff Healey. In the first one he's performing George Harrison's "While my guitar gently weeps"

The second one is a live performance with former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan playing Deep Purple's "When a blind man cries"

And finally a performance with his jazz formation the Jazz Wizards in which you can see a less known Jeff Healey playing the trumpet.

Unfortunately with the last video embedding was disabled so you have to check it at You Tube at the following link.

Official website of Jeff Healey

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everybody. A happy, healthy and in many ways prosperous 2008.
The past December have been crazy with no postings, but I'm going to make that up to you. The next week and maybe the week after that I'll post some stuff I'm preparing now both here as on my photoweblog BrownNoisePhotos.

Hopefully this is the first of many postings this year.

Frank Zappa - Peaches en Regalia (extra)

In my previous post I wrote about Frank Zappa and I added a video from YouTube with a live performance of Peaches en Regalia which was shot at the comedy programme Saturday Night Live.

I also wrote that I liked the live version better than the album version. I wanted to add also a video with the album version, so that people could compare for themselves, but I couldn't find a suitable one. There was an original video, but the sound- and videoquality was not very good. So I made a video myself with a slideshow (so not a real video) of pictures of Frank Zappa that I found around the net combined with the music from Peaches en Regalia from the album "Hot Rats".

So now people can compare for themselves. I wonder which version other Zappa fans prefer.