 On Monday 28th June at 12.30pm Kasim Sulton made the first of his two appearances this day at Summerfest in Milwaukee, WI. This event was advertised as a Star Clinic and Kasim described the event as "A clinic for parents and children.. The clinic will be on how best to introduce interested children in playing a musical instrument. Of course I will weight my discussion on bass playing but I plan to touch on other instruments as well. Unfortunately it wasn't very well attended (although more people did show up than are in the photo above!) but apparently the attendance for Summerfest generally is 7% down on last year and this was a work day for most people. However those people that did attend it, obviously then enjoy it and I'm sure that most, like me, will have learnt something from it! Kasim started by explaining that he'd been playing music for 28 years and that once he started playing he knew that was all he wanted to do. He did keep stressing through the clinic that any child who takes up music should keep up with their schoolwork too though! I won't go through the whole hour and 20 minutes (I'll make copies of the audio recording I took if I get permission) but during the clinic Kasim sang Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing (he explained that that song only has 3 chords in it!) and part of Don't Hold Me Back but he said that he couldn't sing too much or he wouldn't have anything left to play at the show tonight!
 Kasim also got 4 people up on stage at various times. He showed the first little girl two notes to play on the guitar and then he asked for anyone that already played guitar. There were 3 young guys there who were in a band so he got Gerrard (the guitar player as the other two played bass) up on stage and asked him to play some of a song that the band had written and Kasim would play along with it. This was to show that anyone who has some knowledge of the guitar and can "hear" a tune can pick out a tune. The funniest part was that the band was a punk band (and that's hardly Kasim!) and that it started with a bass solo! Kasim asked what the tempo of the tune was and guessed it correctly as he said that almost all punk tunes have a fast tempo! Kasim then played the song almost perfectly which was fascinating to watch but as he played it, he told us where the chorus obviously was and then the bridge! Afterwards Kasim said that he could mainly guess where Gerrard was going with the tune but when he couldn't Kasim would just wait a split second and watch him. For me this was one of the most fascinating parts of the clinic too as Kasim explained how important being able to "hear" a song is before he plays it. He also said that he played a private party on Friday night in Washington, DC with a lot of Billy Joel's band. He said that he had never played with them before but that he was sent a list of two and a half pages of songs to play and that most of them he knew so that he could pick out the songs "without too many obvious errors"! Kasim then discussed playing bass and how important playing scales was when he was learning the guitar. He then said that when he plays bass on stage he "holds down the fort" by just playing some chords and everyone else on stage are playing solos and he can more or less watch them while he just plays his few notes!
 Next Kasim got Dana up on stage (Kasim knows her family as they are big Utopia fans) to play Love In Action. Dana had been playing guitar for a couple of years and knew the beginning of the song so Kasim showed her some more of it and they played the intro of it together (with Kasim playing it on bass). Kasim then sang some more of the song (after someone had prompted him with the first line!)
 Kasim's final guest on stage was young Jaimie and he showed her two more chords. This was really amusing (and showed all his patience) as she had nails and obviously hadn't played much before. Overall I think the main things that Kasim stressed today was learning a musical instrument takes more patience than talent, it helps to be able to hear a song in order to be able to play it, don't play music to the exclusion of all else (as very few people can manage 28 years in the music business as Kasim has), don't put a guitar pic in your mouth(!) and "for a child it increases hand and eye cordination and motor skills probably more than anything else".
Video Clips
Many thanks to Dave T for the following 4 photos: 
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