Week 107: &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

THE DAILY SUN 2

One of the things I love about music is the way it shapes time and makes me feel like I can actually move back and forth in time, slow it down or speed it up, turn it around and go backwards, or any of a number of other time maneuvers and summersaults that make me feel like I actually have some semblance of control over it, which is more than I can say for my daily life.

One of the things that I enjoy the most, and that I call a free time maneuver sometimes happens when I play in a band. Let me see if I can describe it. Let’s say we are playing a gig or a rehearsal, and we are playing a certain chord progression or song. This could be a very loose arrangement, improvising over a vamp, or it could be a fairly strict composition with little room for chance. Either way one of the things I love about music is that even in the strictest compositions music is always flexible.

So we are playing along and I realize we are coming to a certain part in the music, say a turnaround in the melody or a change in rhythm, or maybe even a simple chord change. Right before this moment comes up I get an idea of something that I can do at that point, at that very moment of the change. Something unexpected, surprising, something that I would want to hear happen at that point, something that would enhance that specific moment, an accent, a harmonic variation, an adjustment to the tempo, a rhythmic inversion. It might work or it might not, either way it’s a chance that I like to take, sometimes more daringly, sometimes less so. Often times I know I’ll get a glare from the rest of the group, wondering what I’m doing, but not always. Sometimes it’s magic, sometimes it’s the way things should be. So I have to chance it, because it’s those moments that keep me sane.

I described it as very deliberate, but it all happens intuitively, in the blink of an eye. I get the idea, with some luck a measure before, but most often much closer to the moment when I need to execute it. Most times, the moment is upon me as I’m getting the idea so I just respond and do my variation. Most of the time, the rest of the band looks up at me, and everything continues on smoothly. If there is an audience, they might not even notice anything different going on.

But sometimes, just once in a while, right before the moment arrives, and after I’ve had the idea, in that micro-instant of a moment, someone else in the band does something that prefaces my idea in a way that seems as if she knew exactly what I was planning to do, and decided to insert her own idea as a lead-in to mine. It’s like she read my mind, and it gives me the feeling of moving backwards in time for a moment. Like when someone answers your question before you ask it. Or an even more accurate comparison would be, not when someone else finishes a sentence that you started, but the opposite, when someone else starts the sentence you were about to finish.

And sometimes, in those rarest of occasions, I realize that my idea was just a preface to something someone else was going to do, and that in that smallest of moments there is room for more. And it feels like the moment just continues to expand to allow more and more music. And if you can string together enough of these moments, you end up in another time, a time where you are one with time, you and the rest of the group moving through the time of the music in the way that you intended, even as you don’t know what that is.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen often. Not in music, even less in the rest of my life. The more general feeling is that other people in the world are intending a time that keeps rejecting me. Everyone else is starting and finishing sentences that I can’t begin nor end, that I don’t want to begin or end.

This doesn’t mean that there is nothing out there in the world that appeals to me. On the contrary, I find great enjoyment in much of what my fellow humans create. A good Brooklyn-Bronx game, almost anything Dizzy recorded, Garcia Marquez’s Amor en los Tiempos del Colera, Borges’ Aleph… And there are a few others. But most of the time the attraction is the attraction of interacting with someone else. They show me their music or their books or their sentences and I show them mine. And we nod appreciatively and I go to another time, and they are glad I’m gone. And I’m glad they are gone. I am me and you are you, and we are not together.

But there are those occasional magical moments. They happen often enough in my immediate personal life, mostly with Monica, but they hardly ever happen in the larger world. I never identify like that with someone I see on TV or in a movie or a recording or a book. Not when I see them talking on TV not when I read what they’ve written or heard what they’ve recorded.

Only once in a while does this happen. Only once in a while do I find someone out there in the world that is starting or finishing my sentences without knowing me. It’s very rare, but it happens. And it happened yesterday. Alfredo recommended that I might like this book, so even though I generally don’t take recommendations from Alfredo, today he is so old and tired that I don’t have the heart to say no and I take the book with me as I leave his dingy Staten Island apartment stacked wall to wall with newspapers and books. I was surprised to find myself in the ferry with the book still in my hand, so I opened it and started to read it.

After reading two pages I already felt like I had written this book or more accurately like I had written a version of it. Like this author had either read something I had not yet written and written her response to it or maybe like she knew who I was and had written a story about someone just like me. It’s a novel, but as I read it I felt like I was making the words as I read them. Like she wrote the story that I have been writing in my mind my whole life. I’m no stranger to déjà vu, but reading this book was a very strange version of it. If I was more superstitious I would worry that reading this book was going to cause some little girl to come crawling out of the well where she’s been rotting, and she’s going to come out through the pages of the book to kill me. But this book is a sweet romantic book about love, not a horror story. Yet, I can’t say that it is not a little scary to be reading the words of a stranger as if they were my own.

I couldn’t finish the book. I stayed on the docks reading it, but it was already late and I’d been up for a few days, and I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stay up long enough to finish it. So I fell asleep on a bench and now the book is gone, along with that time. And there’s that prick Frank banging on the door waking me up to go deliver newspapers. Maybe today is the day that I quit this house.

But for now I’m going to lay in bed a little longer. You know, I want to tell you about this book; I want you to read this book. But I can’t bring myself to tell you what book it is because I sound like a crazy person, and I’m afraid it will get back to her who wrote the book. And if it does, I don’t know what would happen. I’m sure she would be terrified of me. I mean, I sound like one of those people like the Son of Sam that gets secret messages from some neighbor’s dog. But I’m not like that.

Ok, I’ll try being nice to Frank today. Have I tried that before?

Spirits

Present Phantom

My Fortieth birthday was awfully quiet. The usual calls from aunts, cousins, grandma were noticeably absent. No call from mom (although we might have beat her to it with Skype - we called her so she could see Clara cruising). No writing on my Facebook Wall. I passed into phantom on that decidedly futureless birthday, 4-0.

I did get an email from Kathy Power that made me smile. Kathy and I are exact birthday mates. She is my female counterpart on earth. Her email had no subject. The body was composed of mostly white space. "We're forty" it read.

Every so often in the past few months Tricia would mention that my birthday falls on a Saturday this year. She would suggest things we could do but I always let the conversation fizzle away. Not that I'm bummed about turning 40 - it's more that I've hardly noticed and as far as birthday wishes go, I think much more about Clara's first than my two score.

This is not to say that I no longer harbor ambitions. But I can't seem to help that the future in my mind belongs to Clara right now. As she grows I'm sure that will change. This moment is just that and life is long.

A Ghost from the Past

The Original de Schmog Fairy Tale is now available at all your favorite online digital music stores including: eMusic, iTunes, Last.fm, Napster, Rhapsody and many many more.

This is the Rudyard's Recording from 1992 featuring the Sprawl Horns and a dildo. I'm very excited to make this available and I hope you will download it and play it for all your friends (the cool new artwork was commissioned from Mr. John Cramer for a song. I hope you enjoy that too).




Here's the de Schmog Fairy Tale Orchestra Performing the Flames that Were in His Heart.

By

By the

By the way,

By the way, I happened upon a TheSkyLine.Net review the other day that references the Fairy Tale. While I wholeheartedly agree that the Live Fairy Tale recording has a better vibe than most of de Schmog's studio work, I don't recall (as the article mentions) doing anything extra to the recording back at the studio. We certainly didn't do any overdubs during mixdown. The rock opera was recorded live straight through. We even took into account that the reel-to-reel tape needed to be exchanged. The taping had to stop briefly but de Schmog did not. That's why the Middleture fades out and then in (Out is where you flip the cassette --cassette was the only previous form of release until this online distribution).

I love live recordings in general, more so apparently than the Skyline crew. de Schmog definitely had some live magic. I still feel lucky and proud to this day that we captured this so well.

New Spirit

A Review of the Exquisite City.

Heading To Singapore Lounge Cast

I can't believe how long its been since I posted a podcast, but since time is a big tangled web of threads, it was really just a moment ago anyway.

I'm enjoying calling all my casts a Lounge Cast. This one is the Headin to Singapore Lounge cast since I'll be heading there Thursday morning bright and early. Next week's post will be from there! 4 years since my last vacation!

Cryptacize Interview

Here is my interview with 66.6(repeating)% of Cryptacize, who I mentioned in my last post, and who are still on tour. This interview took place 2008-10-24 Fri in a car motoring from Oakland to San Francisco over the San Francisco Bay, by way of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I rode shotgun while Chris Cohen (guitar, vocals) drove. Nedelle Torrisi (guitar, autoharp, vocals) sat behind me, opposite our friend Yasi. Percussionist/harmonica enthusiast Michael Carreira stayed in the East Bay.


So... how's it going?

NT: You've never done this before, have you?

I hear that you've been working on a record lately?

CC: Where'd you hear that?

I dunno, from the internet.

CC: You heard it from me.

So how's it been going? So you're recording in your mountain hideaway?

CC: We recorded in a lot of different places. We recorded at Nedelle's parents in Nedelle's brother's old room in Vacaville. We recorded in our closet. We recorded at my parent's house in L.A. We recorded at their cabin too, near Yosemite. We haven't had our apartment, so we've been traveling around and living in different places and recording where we could.

Are you recording onto laptop, I guess?

CC: Yeah, we've recorded it all in ProTools. Our friend calls it "Blow Tools". I don't think it blows, I like it.

So how is this album shaping up compared to the last one?

CC: Pretty bad. No, I'm just kidding.

NT: It's good. I think it's better.

CC: It's better? Are you asking when you say "shaping up", do you mean good or bad, or...?

Well, just in terms of, is it a new musical direction, or is it more of the same?

CC: It's a lot thicker. It's the same direction in a lot of ways, but it's been executed more thickly.

Like in terms of more overdubs, or in terms of using distortion this time...?

CC: Well, there was lots of distortion on Dig That Treasure.

NT: It was accidental distortion, this time it's intentional.

CC: We got new fuzz pedals. But yeah, there's a lot more overdubs, and kind of like a more fantasy approach, where we didn't know how to play the songs beforehand, except for a couple of them. The last time we recorded, we knew how to play all of our songs, pretty much, and then we recorded them together.

I understand [drummer/percussionist] Mike [Carreira] wasn't along for these various trips?

CC: Mike came out to the cabin to do his drum tracks a couple different times. He did a couple trips. And then we would show him stuff after we did it, periodically. Mike didn't really do any overdubs. A lot of songs actually just started with the drums, and Mike never really went back and did another pass at a song, he would pretty much do one take.

He was perfect from the start?

CC: Yeah, you might say.

So I guess the songs had to retain the same structure as your initial take on them because of that?

CC: No, because we chopped it up a lot after. A lot of the structure of the songs totally changed since Mike recorded his drums. And we did a lot of things that were actually loops and stuff, although you wouldn't necessarily know that.

So what stage are you at now? You've recorded all the stuff, have you mixed it yet?

CC: Yeah, we've been mixing it for almost two months or something. We're not quite done.

Is it gonna come out on the same label as last time?

CC: Yeah, same label, Asthmatic Kitty. We're gonna put out a 7", hopefully before the album comes out. We're working on something with Burning Star Core. He's gonna edit our album down to a couple minutes, so it's gonna be like a highlights reel, and that'll be a sneak peak of the album. A 'sizzle reel'. One side of it's gonna be that, and the other side of it hopefully, if everything goes as planned, is gonna be... well, it's a surprise.

And that will be on the same label?

CC: No. Actually, we don't have a label to put that out yet; we're shopping.

What are you doing for the videos?

CC: We're gonna make some ourselves; we got a camera. We were watching these squirrels at my parents' house. My parents bought a bird feeder and they filled it with sunflower seeds, and they put it on their back porch. But my dad was too lazy to hang it up in the tree, so he just left it on the porch, and then all these squirrels have come to eat it, and the birds can't get at it. These squirrels have these super-macho power struggles over food, and we have a lot of footage of that we're considering maybe somehow using.

NT: I was gonna make them lip-sync to one of our songs, because when they're eating their mouths are moving really fast, but if you slow it down, it can look like they're singing.

CC: Also, there are some really cute ones, like there are these little baby ones. There's chipmunks and squirrels.

NT: And they also do some dance moves sometimes that are really cute.

CC: And we also have some other videos maybe in the works. Our friend Darren Keen, a.k.a. "The Show is the Rainbow" is going to make one and this dude Donovan Vim Crony is hopefully gonna make a video for us too.

What exactly is the deal with this Danielson tour? You're gonna be in their backing band?

CC: We're gonna be involved somehow. We're not really exactly sure.

NT: I know we're gonna wear some cool shoes.

CC: Yeah, we saw pictures of the shoes the other day.

NT: Specialized shoes made by John Fluevog for Danielson.

But are you guys are gonna be playing as part of the Danielson band?

CC: We asked them if we could open for them; we have the same booking guy. Erik, the booking guy said that Daniel's putting together a new band, because the family can't go on tour so I was like, maybe we can offer to play in his band, as an incentive, if we played in the band for free.

Have you been listening to all their CD's just in case?

CC: Yeah, he gave us a list of the possible songs, so we're trying to learn all the words.

NT: I'm trying.

CC: Nedelle's trying. I'm gonna cram at the last second, cause I have to finish mixing our record...

NT: You should listen to the CD nonstop on the flight to the East Coast. I'm excited.

So that's the situation for the whole tour? You're opening for them?

CC: Yeah, he's taking us along for the whole tour. We're very grateful to him.

So what's the future after this next tour? The album comes out in...?

NT: April. We're just gonna try to get jobs again, and work on some videos and 7"'s and just fun things, but kinda just wait for the record to come out.

Did you have a lot of extra songs that you wrote and aren't using?

NT: We had one extra song, which hopefully we can arrange in a way that pleases all of us.

CC: And we have lots of tiny parts that we threw out.

You kind of have a bucket of those sitting around, that you can string together into songs?

Yasi: How tiny?

CC: Pretty tiny.

Yasi: Like a bar?

NT: Everywhere from a bar, sure, definitely... Like a little riff...

Yasi: Less than a bar?

NT: Oh, Chris probably has some that are less than a bar.

CC: No...

NT: Really? But you have real short things.

CC: They go by fast.

NT: Mine are mostly whole chord progressions. Chris has a lot of riffs.

CC: I have one that I can show you right now. Actually, this one hasn't been thrown out yet though, and it actually might already be a song, I'm not sure. I've been kinda working on it. It goes like [sings]... I think it might be stolen from the breakdown in "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer. Like [sings]...

NT: No, that's not it, [sings]...

Do you have that problem a lot, where you write something, and then you're like, "oh wait, that's Ghostbusters", or something?

NT: I think we've had moments like that, not like ripping off "Ghostbusters" per se, but...

[Yasi whispers something to Nedelle.]

NT: No way, really?

CC: You've ripped it off?

NT: How did Conor just pull that out?

Yasi: Ghostbusters? I don't know, we didn't talk about it.

NT: That's weird.

What?

CC: Nedelle thinks that I ripped off the NPR theme.

NT: Yeah, the "All Things Considered", it goes [sings]...

Yasi: Yeah, yeah.

CC: It sounds like it when you sing it, but when you hear it, it doesn't really...

Yasi: No, I wasn't saying "yeah", I was saying "yeah" like, "I love that song".

CC: I actually don't love that song at all, but I guess...

NT: We had to take that part out of the song.

So do you see yourselves doing any other musical projects besides Cryptacize?

CC: I don't see myself doing anything other than Cryptacize.

NT: Nor do I.

CC: I see myself sitting in the chair in front of the computer for 20 hours.

What about The Curtains, is that ever gonna come back?

CC: The Curtains is like if I wasn't doing this. Cryptacize is kind of more fun.

Are you guys are planning on doing another headline tour in the spring?

CC: We're hoping that some band will take us on tour with them. For our booking agent to book shows for us, he makes like what you would make working at McDonald's, setting up shows for us. He is willing to do it, and he will do it if no one else wants us to open for them. But yeah, hopefully someone will come along and swoop us up, and present us to all of their fans.

Are there any bands that you've noticed have been influenced by you guys yet?

CC: No. I've noticed a lot of bands that have influenced us. I don't know, James Brown probably is our biggest influence. As far as inspiration of the greatest, the most untouchable, the most hardcore, he's the ultimate musician to me.

Items may have shifted

Hello. I apologize for the late post this week. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were packing and moving from DC to Boston. There is no internet yet at my new place, but I have access here at MIT.

I haven't been online or doing anything fun or music related, so I don't have much to write about this week.

There seems to be a lot going on in Boston. Here is your opportunity to give me your top five favorite places to hear or play music in the Boston area. So far, I've been listening to trains go by and freeway traffic. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet where I live.

Admitted Affection

Guilty pleasure is the wrong word. My crush on WilsonPhillips is guilty. My absolute love for everything Kanye West, well, that is pure pleasure. But sometimes I get myself into something that’s less than respectable. A band my friends would probably avoid. I think, “Given enough time, this ill-regarded band could make the jump to near respectability.”

Oasis is really the poster child for what I’m talking about. By now enough time has passed that every hipster of a certain age is willing and able to defend those first two Oasis records. Dumb as a bag of hammers? Yes. But they did have some killer lines, didn’t they? And they married their wistful, obvious rhymes an unbeatable streak of great melodies. Took me forever to admit it, but Oasis was a great band. For a little while.

Oasis aren’t alone. There are several bands that might fit the Oasis mold. I don’t mean they’re on the same level quality-wise. Indeed, me and everyone reading this would be better off listening to something else besides the five bands in this post. But at some point, these dudes might turn a corner. Or savvy listeners might re-evaluate their past masters. Maybe they’ve got some good qualities we’ve overlooked. Maybe they aren’t too smart. And sure, they’ve all got some serious weaknesses. But they’ve all achieved critical mass at some point (if not critical approval). Some of them are still very popular. Yet, for some reason, people with actual taste haven’t quite given in.

This post is basically me wondering aloud: do these bands have significant redeeming qualities? Such that you might want to be acquainted? For your convenience, I’ve listed them in order, based on the strength of my recommendation. And the last band on this list probably shouldn’t have made it.

Coldplay

This is the most obvious example, and they may be the closest to that magical moment when knowledgeable music lovers admit, “yeah, I don’t turn them off when I hear one of the singles.” I certainly feel that way. But when it comes to Coldplay’s first record, Parachutes, I don’t merely tolerate it. I fucking love it.

This first track sets a tone for the whole record, with it’s “Ventura Highway” chords, and it’s nautically flanged organ and guitar. The thing is, it’s a wonderful guitar record from beginning to end. And Chris Martin’s lyrics, while occasionally cringe-worthy, are better here than they ever would be again. Yeah that voice is unfuckwithable, but the songs and playing are also first-rate. Sure Parachutes got knocked as Radiohead wannabe. But my dark, guilty secret is that I like Parachutes almost as much as I like The Bends.

Snow Patrol

If you’ve heard of Snow Patrol, you’ve may only be familiar with their execrable major label output, recorded after they realized how much money they could make if they sounded more like Coldplay. But their first two records were totally different than the soaring adult contemporary pap they’re putting out now.

On those first two records, Songs for Polar Bears and When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up, they were still awfully sensitive but the hooks weren’t nearly as obvious as they are now. Both early records grew on me precisely because their tender ballads were so subtly well-constructed.

It helped that they sounded more like an American indie band than the treacly wave of British crap that followed Coldplay’s success (e.g., Starsailor, Travis). You’ll hear what I mean here:

Anyway, I dig the hell out of those first two records. But, like Oasis, they haven’t done anything worth a damn since.

The Killers

The jury’s still out on The Killers. I thought they were laughably bad when I saw them open for the Pixies. But then I saw them on Saturday Night Live shortly after the release of their second record. They sounded much better. A little like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty had a new-wave baby. Hmmm, I said. Maybe a year or two later, I encountered the same song on Guitar Hero III. Loved it. Lyrics are a bit overwrought, but shit this song is fun.

I fell even harder for “Bones.” They might be stealing from every 80s New Wave ever, but on this song the  the production sounds more like Frank Black’s early solo records and They Might Be Giants. I’m sure it’s just the cheesy horns, but it’s an awful lot of fun. Yes, I said fun again.

 

So yeah, I’m listening to the Killers a lot lately. I’m almost to the point where I like them enough to not include them in this post. Almost.

Third Eye Blind

When I worked at the Hard Rock Cafe in Houston, I actually enjoyed waiting tables with a constant stream of music videos blaring all around me. It was a pretty good mix of classic rock (Dire Straits, Beatles), semi-popular indie rock (Pulp, Jeff Buckley) and current buzz faves (remember Eve6???).

Yeah the Buzz bands were my least favorite, too. But there was one buzz song in frequent rotation I always liked to hear: Third Eye Blind’s “Losing a Whole Year.”

More than anything I liked the way it set the pace for me when I was burning a path between my tables and the kitchen, but I noticed something else, too. Third Eye Blind were a lot more musically sophisticated than Hootie or Matchbox20. Losing a Whole Year is a chorus-free hit song, constructed with some odd arpeggios and a wandering bass melody. That self-titled debut also had “How’s it Going to Be”, another of TEB’s banal relationship songs that seems to nevertheless seemed to hit me square in the gut at the time. Maybe that one is a guilty pleasure.

Their second record had much less going for it, but I liked the lead single quite a bit. Here again, I dug the unexpected craftsmanship that you get in otherwise generic, empty-headed buzz hit. Great drum sounds, harmonized bass lines, a bridge that returns seamlessly to the verse and a nice re-imagination of the chorus. The sophistication ceased to be a surprise once I learned that singer Steven Jenkins successfully insisted on producing his own records, and his guitarist and co-writer studied guitar with Joe Satriani (that might explain the focus on composition rather than pure wankery).

Unfortunately, they look like tools in their videos. And that’s probably because they are tools. The songs certainly don’t give you a lot of substance beyond the better-than-average studio chops and some radio-ready hooks. But I tend to evaluate bands relative to their peers. I ask, did this band exceed the mark set by others in their same weight class? The answer has got to be yes. Would you rather listen to Third Eye Blind or 3 Doors Down?  When I was at the Hard Rock Cafe, I didn’t have a choice, but I had a pretty clear preference.

Kings of Leon

This last one is difficult to explain or justify. I just love this song. And I keep hoping they’ll write other songs just as good.

Sadly, it’s unlikely to happen. Most of their other songs are pretty crappy. And singer Caleb Followill is easily the worst lyricist in this list. He’s alright when you can barely understand him. But more often than not, you hear him pretty clearly. And all his songs are about sex. I’ve supported this approach in the past (because rock ‘n’ roll really should be about getting it on). But this dude needs to get his head out of his loins. Sample, you ask?

Free- is all that she could bleed
That's why'll she'll never stay
White- bare naked in the night
Just lookin' for some play

Just another girl that wants to rule the world
Any time or place
And when she gets into your head
You know she's there to stay

You want it
She's got it
Molly's Chambers gonna change your mind
She's got your
Your pistol

Yeah… it’s pretty bad. Still, of all the Strokes-y bands, I love KoL for their southern bent, clean guitars, and singer distinctive voice. If they could marry that sound with decent songs that weren’t mired in single entendres, I might be able to recommend them more heartily. But hey, they don’t need you or me. They’re fucking huge in Britain.

Just like Oasis.

Filler

I don't have much to say this week. Enjoy some Czechs.

Week 106: The Ballad of Stayed and Gone 13

Since we are not playing out as a band as much as we used to, I have been playing these small gigs by myself. These gigs are usually in a form that I would describe as songwriter showcases. Where two to four songwriters play about 30 minutes each, or rotate one song each. The rotation gigs can be fun, but you need the right mix of people since you are performing as a weird sort of band. Recently, I've been really enjoying the straight up line-up ones. In those, one has more time to develop the performance, and there is no need to be so strictly song oriented. The one line-up showcase that I've enjoyed the most, enough that I've returned several times is the Songslinger's Showcase that Brandon Herndon and John Pardue put together. I like Songslingers for various reasons. One is that Brandon and John pick the people and for the most part I trust their taste. It's also good that they host it at our home base bar, The Cave.

Last night I played one of these gigs. It's usually three or four people and we each get about 30 minutes, which is just about as long as I can stand myself by myself on stage. And that is one of the hardest things about these gigs, the fact that I have to play by my lonesome. And boy do I get nervous. I've played for years and years in bands in all kinds of stages, and have never gotten as nervous about a band gig as I do about these solo gigs. However, recently I have figured out that two shots of bourbon and two beers is all I need to kill the nervous bug.

Last night I got there early and even though I've learned exactly how much I can drink, I was feeling good so I went ahead and doubled the dose. Four shots of Ancient Age later... I think I played one song all the way through. Mostly I'd start playing a song, then stop in the middle, to comment on something about the song, or something totally unrelated to anything, then I would realize that I didn't want to go back to that song, so I'd start another one. And so on. At some point I played part of Peter Gabriel's Red Rain as some kind of joyful celebration of the victory of red, which to most of the world is the color of the left, while blue is the color of the right. In the USA the colors are backwards. As was apparently my logic last night. So my 30 minutes turned into some kind of comedy routine. And, surprisingly, everyone loved it, nothing like a train wreck performance to captivate an audience.

Meanwhile back at the studio....

We are really close to finishing all the tracking for the record. We were hoping to release the record by the end of 2008, but it looks like we won't. But it does look like we'll be done with the tracking by the end of the year, so we should be able to mix and master and release it in early 2009.

In the meantime, here's a couple of songs in their almost-finished, unmixed, and unmastered glory.

Stayed and Gone - this one now has Alex Bowers on piano, and most recently Seamus Kinney laid down some sexy trombone on it.

Season of the Grape - this one now has Nathan Golub on pedal steel, and Alex on piano, and even a bit of cuica.

The Exquisite City

Today I dropped off my contribution to Kathleen Judge's Exquisite City Project. The Exquisite City is a collaboratively built city made out of cardboard that comes together at the last minute. The individual parts (buildings, parks, streets, etc...) are made independently by individual artists. My contribution is an "exquisite window" which is one room of a building - a diorama in a shoe box. The shoe boxes will be piled up behind a building fascade.

It's not surprising in this town that Judge conceived of this project. She has been involved in the past with the Birdhouse Museum Cardboard Art Shows inspired by the work of Ray Johnson. As for the "exquisite" aspect, this is inspired by the Exquisite Corpse most prominantly associated with the early Surrealists. The Art Institute of Chicago has a few Exquisite Corpses in their permanent collection. Several years ago, these inspired me to create EC's with bandmates while on tour. Here's one from THE LATEST.

The Exquisite City is nevertheless a unique idea, all hats off to Kathleen. I'm excited to see her contribution in particular since I am a big fan of her work (a few years ago I eInterviewed her for the Disclexington blog). She has brought together some terrific artists, including many known as much for their musical contributions to this city. Sally Timms of the Mekons is taking part, as is Keith Herzik - another great local poster artist and fellow Texan/member of THE LATEST.

Below is a picture of my extremely modest contribution. I don't normally like art explained for its moral message but I'm going to make an exception because I think now is the time to voice these ideas and make them a bigger reality.

This room depicts a small group of guys collaborating as a band. It depicts them talking and waiting in between creative bursts. Behind them, scribbled on the wall is the phrase "World's Greatest (and Smallest) Band." The band you are in IS the World's Greatest Band. The World's Greatest Band IS the Smallest Band. Do good work. Collaborate. Be a part of a community and all that jibberjabber. But I think I am preaching to the choir here so I'll shut up.

bonus post - 14th and U - Obamafest

it's nearly 1am in washington. the music and dancing in the street is unlike anything i've ever seen in this country. it reminds me of the time i was in italy during the world cup. 14th & U, the intersection where the riots started after martin luther king jr was assassinated, is now teeming with celebrating people of all races, hugging, high fiving, holding hands, singing, and mostly screaming. cars going by are honking their horns or blaring their car alarms. people have been drumming for hours. i had justin in houston on ichat via wifi, and he was on belgian tv.

happy americans are loud.

Is Today Tuesday?

This post will be a disappointment. It will not talk about the, what was it? Oh, the election. Also, I will continue to be kind of a dweeb, especially since I still have almost zero time to do a danged thing other than - be billable, work on the store, and be a parent.

Not that given time I could come up with much better, but then again, it would be nice to find out.

I don't know if you've heard, but starting up a business is hard. I don't even have time to pay attention to what is going on, and feel bad because this election looks so interesting.

Two thoughts there:
1. Reminds me of the awesome Lovesac video on how that company started. I have it on my drive but it's too big for YouTube, and though the story isn't nearly as interesting read as heard and seen, you can scan it here.

2. I really am enjoying finding out about politics via people's status updates on Facebook.

I really like Facebook and find it a useful tool for both wasting time, reconnecting with people from the past, and even getting some business going. I mean, isn't it totally awesome?

Currently I'm swirling around my various phases of historical me. I've reconnected with a few high school friends, who I have hardly ever spoken to at all since those days. I've reconnected with college buds, and that is most awesome. I've reconnected with people from the few years after college, which was quite refreshing, and then there are all the Austin friends as well as the current work dudes.

Past Present and Future are totally fascinating and I'd really like to understand more about this idea of Time. I don't have time now, and meanwhile I feel like I'm in a big bath of bubbles of time. Oh there's 1993's pink bubble, and that's how I was then, and those are the people and I can think about it and be right back in it. And these are the lessons I know I learned back then, and here's the lessons I'm learning that I already knew but didn't know I knew, that I discounted.

Simply, I have a new perspective and love looking at my life with these new glasses.

I know I'll get bored soon, and you may be bored now, but maybe it's happening to you too? I know that there was a big bump in facebook usage a few months ago and I'd bet the majority of us got on back then, so may be having a similar experience.

I think our generation is having a very unique time with this whole facebook thing. Half of us were online at least half of our lives, so there was this dividing line that is now being crossed.

Funny, de Schmog made it to the digital age, but my favorite band from college, just a couple of years previous, did not.

It is the weirdest thing to know about this, and have one of the members from that band go to my cookie store and have a cookie with his child.

Maybe none of this is weird and it's just as simple as what would have been writing a letter to someone decades ago, but I think that the quickness of it all and having everybody on at the same time is what is the strange part.

Now I can cross-reference my friends. Were my friends in high school Obama lovers like my friends in Houston? How come none of the people I know are for McCain? Or are they just being quiet? Why don't the McCain people speak up more? Maybe it's because they aren't there.

Just goes to prove the research bit I read awhile back that the political side you are on when you are a child is the same you will be when you die. Isn't that strange?

Huh.

Back to work....

I Believe

First I would like to note that my friends' band Cryptacize is on tour, and you should go check 'em out. Music and tour dates can be listened to and viewed here. They're coming to such NAP-friendly cities as Chicago, Austin, and Houston. Their music is sweet and slightly off kilter, a real treat. They are touring with and, it sounds like, possibly playing in, Danielson. Or at least wearing their shoes. As it happens, you can watch Danielson: A Family Movie free on Pitchfork.tv for a couple more days here. At this point, I should probably note that Cryptacize is not a Christian-rock band. Anyway, I have an interview with them ready to go once I get the go ahead, so this isn't the last you'll hear.

Also of course I would be remiss if I didn't entreat everyone to help end our long national nightmare by voting for Barack Obama tomorrow!!!! You can find your polling place here. Stand in line no matter how long it takes. Your country thanks you.

Lifes Rich Pageant was the first R.E.M. record I ever heard, so it'll always have a special place in my musical heart. They were firing on all cylinders, and Stipe was still writing those odd but amazing lyrics that simultaneously make no literal sense while perfectly conveying the inexpressible. Here's somebody's class project for "I Believe". I hope its relevance is evident.

Sponsor week

It's been a blur of travel and adventure, and I would have missed my Sunday post except that I'm on the west coast, so I'm making it in under the time-zone+time-change wire.

This won't be a long post, but I promise to start giving more detail over the next few weeks after I get to MIT and get settled. I was there last week for their twice-yearly Sponsor Week, which meant that all the students had been pushing without sleep for days getting their projects running for the open house demos to the big money.

One thing that got lots of attention was the presentation by the team building the new "Hollywood East," called Plymouth Rock Studios. "Slated to open in September 2010, Plymouth Rock Studios will be the East Coast’s first independent, full-service film and television studio facility to offer everything a storyteller needs, from pre-production to post-production services. The campus features fourteen sound stages, ranging in size from 18,000 to 24,000 square feet, that connect the filmmaker directly to comprehensive, cutting-edge facilities."

They are striving to be completely green, carbon neutral, etc. I like the idea, but I wonder if it's possible to make such a huge facility truly sustainable. I've worked on film sets and it's not the mentality of the industry. Nevertheless, I'm glad someone's trying.

The week got me wondering if being at the Media Lab is going to successfully lure me out of my warm little audio cubby hole into the big scary world of moving pictures. I hope not - the audio purist in me thinks in principle it's good to have people in the world who don't let video kill the audio star. It will be interesting, though. I will keep you posted unless I get fired by the Judge and Jury.

Don't go, Carlos. I like your posts.

Furr

I have a longer post planned for next week, but this week I thought I’d share my  favorite new jam. It’s the title track from Blitzen Trapper’s superb new record  Furr.  Below is a darkened live version.

I like the whole record. A lot. More than I liked their last one even, but it’s this one song’s perfect amalgamation of Dylan and Simon that’s got me humming. I suppose it’s fairly derivative, but I am happy to find a great new song in whatever borrowed voice it must be sung.