My mentor Gino Vannelli, singing a song he wrote back in '79 and arranged here for the Metropole Orchestra and performed last year in Norway.
Amazing bass and drum performances, (as well as the orchestra), and a very hot guitar solo by a guy I met in a workshop some years ago and correspond with occasionally, Peter Tiehuis, (solo starts around 2:55).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVVKv-9Hl8AWhat many people don't know is that Gino not only sings, but is a genius at songwriting, lyrics, recording engineering, acoustics, guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, and percussion.
He was many years ahead of his time when he and his brother
literally chased down Herb Alpert, (at A&M Records in Hollywood, where they had been camping out and had run out of money, planning to return home to Montreal the next day), and begged him to listen to a demo.
Herb did, and Gino's professional recording career began at the ripe age of 19.
Many years and albums later, he is now regarded in the music industry as one of the true Masters of Music alive today, and a "musician's musician".
He is also the inspiration for the guy who dances in the video at the end of Celtics' blowouts that KG loves so much.
That guy's name is
not Gino, but he wears a t-shirt from Gino Vannelli's "Brother To Brother" tour, (the above title song), a concert series I was lucky enough to see in Boston, and still have the same t-shirt from.
Amazing musician and a perfectionist in the studio, and easily the largest creative influence in my life, (along with Walt Whitman).