deltasleep

Long story short

2010-06-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

Dusting off the old identity.

2010-05-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Wow. So, somewhere in the last two years, I went from student teaching in a middle school in middle Tennessee, to working IT for a Biotech startup on an island on the West coast. The other day, I helped somebody book 24hrs with a particle accelerator. Now I work with the smartest people I have ever known, and they're all really friendly, down to earth people.

We bought a house. We mostly renovated the house. Made more money than we have ever had thought of. Spring has come, and we should be feeling really good.
But it's never that easy for us. Through a series of stupid and only partially random events, we're going to take a humongous pay cut next year- but only for a year.

So now, we get to go back to broke. At first I was afraid, I was terrified.

Then, music started to creep back into my focus. I'm slowly starting to recognize my career as a distraction from music- not the other way around. As soon as I faced the reality that I was going to have to hustle again, I got a little less fat and happy, and a little more musical. Maybe this will be a good year for me musically, since it's obviously going to be a total disaster financially. They prescribe people with ADHD stimulants- maybe pressure has the same paradoxical effect on me.

I really need a reminder that the "stuff" I pursue is too often at the expense of my identity and my commitments. That old saw about trading in one's passion and ideals for gold? That's the one.
So now it's late night, and even the dog is asleep. I can see the distant lights of the other side of town across the water from my studio window. I've got a glass of whiskey and a Spinners 45 in my headphones. I can no longer buy my way out of trouble- I work a temp job in the worst job market since my grandma was born.
I'm gonna have to think sharper and more aggressively than ever before- and better than about 100% of the millions of other people in my position. It's in these moments of personal crises that I reach clarity.

Putting My Life Back Together

2009-12-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. I've been busy.
After I made it mostly out of the hell that an improperly implemented rehabilitation loan can bring to your life, I got started on the house. We have a great, very social northwestern neighborhood in West Bremerton- we love it. Even though it's a really small town.
We've painted all but the bathrooms and a dining nook. The work never ends, but we're to the point now that there's just a lot of unfinished projects- not a filthy disgusting house. Most of our things are out of boxes now...but the studio is only just now starting to look like a studio. It's a nice big room with a view of the Olympic Mountains. I got a nice old library desk to go in it, and the floors are a well worn white oak that we waxed and buffed to a shine. We painted the walls a really comfortable bright seafoam/teal sort of color with crisp white trim. Feels good. I quit my second job for tax reasons, and I'm really enjoying having a normal life.
I got a puppy. His name is Frink. He's half brindle french bulldog and half haggard puppy mill pug. And half stupid.
I bought a Korg Nanopad and I'm loving the FPC's ability to quickly make things happen with samples.
I'm still in my writer's block rut, but I'm confident I'll work my way out of it. I am really looking forward to getting the studio space all cleaned up and organized. I'm planning on building a guitar rack on the wall even...pumped!
In the mean time, I'm having a blast going through the record collection and sitting by a fire, while I try not to sweat the writers block that comes from never, ever having any time alone to work on music. Music is, all in all, a pretty trivial thing- you know?

Blog About my Home Renovation Project

2009-06-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Victoria and I now have a blog detailing our home renovation project this summer. We thought it might be a fun way to keep a journal detailing what we're doing, as well as keep our friends and families up to date with the project. We are closing on the home around July ish, and super excited about the project. The new blog is at: http://tudorks.wordpress.com

I've also added a Twitter widget to the side bar of this blog, so that I can at least keep some micro-blogs going here.

I Made It!

2009-03-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

I just came out of the most nasty, gray winter ever. We're starting to ease into our spring pattern of weather- rainy mornings and sunny afternoons. Wildflowers are sprouting and the moss is greening up. My attitude and my feelings about music, and everything else, have changed so dramatically in one year.
I feel like I shook off the 7 years of poverty and anxiety pretty quickly. It's been a huge positive change for me to move from some place that didn't like me, that took active measures to keep me out, into a place where I'm wanted. I spent 7 years begging bumbling PhDs to permit me to sacrifice more money on their altar. Begging $9/hr jobs to allow me to leave my trailer for an extra water break. I did all that only to find that teaching was the most abusive profession on earth. Abuse from administrators, abuse from students, politicians, parents... Faculty who refused to recommend me because I'm not religious, administrators who sent mispelled emails in all caps- it was a nightmare. Now when I go to a meeting at work, I'm among friends. I work with people who keep me on my toes, and to whom my skeptical and critical nature is an enormous asset.
I'm still getting my head around just how different my life got in 1 year.
Before 2007 I had never even been West of the Mississippi, I made one trip to PDX. I had never seen mountains in North America, let alone all of the things I saw in a one week trip across the country: prairie dogs, antelope, sagebrush, nazi biker gangs, the rainforest, coyotes, seals, bald eagles, gigantic water beetles, salmon(they actually jump), himalayan blackberry brambles the line my roads now like strip malls used to. All the modern furniture and electronics I could never find in Nashville is popping up left and right around me. In short, Seattle is exactly what my adolescent fantasy of Seattle hoped for. I had almost convinced myself that every place was as miserable for me as Nashville.
My situation now is far from perfect, but when I look back at the dystopia I left, this is heaven. If I could, I would take a gigantic skil saw and cut the southeast off of the US and let it sink into the ocean. I can't even stand to hear the accent on TV sometimes. The only thing I miss is the immigrant population that I enjoyed the benefit of, and the sunshine. It's impossible to find anything in the way of a Seattle equivalent of Nolensville Road here. I miss my international markets.
I was in the wrong place. Sometimes I meet some poor lost southerner wandering around the northwest, and most of them are so unhappy here.
So now that the dust has settled, I need to keep an eye on craigslist for some of the great 60s japanese guitars that go for peanuts out here, and decide what kind of music I'll make when I live in a place where I can breathe, and where there's no pressure, and maybe even an audience.

Stupid song I made to test out the totally amazing acoustic guitar that my Dad was nice enough to lend me.

I Missed Nashville for a Minute There

2009-01-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

And then this happened:

Oh wait, no, that was what I liked about Nashville. That and the fact that everything is really cheap. This was what slapped me in the face and reminded me why I ran from the south screaming and vowing never to return:
The English Only Resolution.

That's right, Nashville just ran a special election to consider whether or not they should stop translating government documents or providing services to people who don't speak English. They went out of their way, $280,000 out of their way, just to hold an election to decide how many people are ignorant jerks. And guess what? That number looks to be around 40%.

I'm happy to have a new president and a new congress. I hope that the era of hateful politics toward gays, atheists, and immigrants is over. I hope that America has learned its lesson after letting those people sit in power. I hope that this means that the rational, logical side of America has finally edged out the Nashvillians of our country. I hope now those Nashvillians get a taste of the persecution they've been spewing forth for decades.
Now that I've been out of the Southeast for over 6 months I'm realizing that the various instances of hate and persecution that were perpetrated by the south- from the civil war to their persecution of immigrants, is all part of one large, long pattern. It's a pattern of campaigns to limit the freedoms of any and all citizens. And it's a pattern of hateful behavior that so much of the country deserves punishment for- and yet shows no remorse, rather pride.
I'm proud of the Northwest for not wasting their lives on campaigning to persecute a particular group. It's amazing what you could do with all that time, Southeast.

Awesome Tapes From Africa Mix

2008-12-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

Download

I've been taking some of my christmas break from work(s) to dig around mp3 blogs. One of my favorite, recent finds has been "Awesome Tapes From Africa" a blog of found cassettes audio from, you guessed it, Africa. I am pretty sure that the writer doesn't live in Africa, since I've seen a ton of these kinds of tapes at my Afro-Caribbean markets in Nashville over the years.
I've really been missing the immigrant culture I used to experience in Nashville. The Kitsap Peninsula is absolutely one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, but it's a bit of a monoculture. Ok, it's a complete monoculture. What's really killing me is the lack of good food. There's some great food across the water in Pike Place, but you can be almost sure you'll receive the worst service in the universe. I think what I miss the most of about the immigrant restaurants and markets I went to in the Nashville area was how nice everybody was- they appreciated my business, they remembered me when I came back, they asked me what I was going to do with a food I bought, or I asked them what they recommended. Sometimes when I do business in Seattle I get the impression that the server or seller thinks that I should feel honored to get to do business with them.

Since my wife and I have all summer off, and our lease is up in June, we're thinking about spending the summer renting something cheap in downtown Portland and just putting our stuff in storage for the summer. Everything in the Kitsap area is for rent, so finding a space when we get back is not a worry. Our current property managers are absolutely negligent and ineffective, so our lease won't be renewed anyways. We're hoping maybe we can grab some kind of summer work or volunteer work in town and meet a few people who might help us land jobs in Portland sooner than just throwing applications around.

I have high hopes for 2009.

Stop the Christmas Insanity.

2008-11-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

Download.

The AP reports a 34 year old man, a temporary worker for Wal-Mart during the holidays, was trampled to death by an anxious herd of retail zombie moms attempting to get $30 off of a camcorder and $4 sweatpants. I was thinking about this when I mixed this little 30 minute set.
I don't even know what to say. This man's death is the perfect example of the abuse and suffering caused by modern life. I hope before he died he was able to ask someone if they wanted a store credit card- or his managers might not put up a $3 plaque in his honor. The rich oppress the poor, and wealth as identity devalues the lives of the poor. The police who attempted to provide CPR to this man were also trampled and shoved. Shoppers were forced to evacuate the store, and were reportedly very angry that they had to leave.

If there wasn't a "War on Christmas" before, there should be now. Christmas deserves to be a ritual observed by the devoutly religious Christians among us, at church. The very day after our nation observes a sweet holiday about being thankful for what you've got, we go out and get in line at stores to wait all night in the freezing cold for the chance to buy Chinese junk that's only being marked up 500% instead of 800% FOR ONE DAY ONLY. Ask around, most people's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.
The communities my wife and I work in are absolutely flooded with "Giving Tree" type operations. Apparently, lots of kids might not get a good Christmas this year. You're going to call me a curmudgeon, but I learned the most from the disappointing Christmases when my family didn't have much money. I'm happy that my parents didn't go into massive personal debt just to shut me up about wanting this or that. Take a look at the chart I've stolen and tell me if you think we've let this get out of hand enough.
So I'm now joining the leagues of people who wish they could cancel Christmas. As a nation, we ought to be adults, and get every little child nothing for Christmas. I'm starting to view Christmas culture as another extension of the "permanent adolescence" mental illness that pervades American society. Instead, we should have a nice meal, play a board game, and have a long serious talk about how we got here as a culture. This is sick. Don't donate to charity in my name, either. Keep your money. Tell your children that the generations of entitlement mentality have completely destroyed your ability to get anything but high interest credit to buy them things with. Tell them that poor children shouldn't get piles of stuff for Christmas like rich children. Because being poor sucks, and maybe they'll be motivated to do better for themselves as adults. Instead of buying a television so big it tips the trailer over on store credit and then not paying the water bill for six months.
It's the hard lessons that stick. Just ask anybody who lived through the last depression.

Everything about this is perfect

2008-11-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

The mix, the tone on the piano, the great taste in combining high and low fidelity sounds, up front and blurriness... it's just RIGHT.

I love the references to both surf and blues- it just needs over saturated film to be sensory overload.

Can you smell the lurching tapeloop drums?

Living the Good Life.

2008-11-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28121631@N02/sets/72157608791427603/
Spent this Saturday on a day trip up and around the Olympic Peninsula and to the Pacific Coast. US101 is a beautiful drive through almost all of trip, except Forks, which was a nasty, muddy dump of a town. Ruby Beach is unbelievable-check the pictures. Ate at a nice, nice restaurant in Port Angeles with the generic name of Bella Italia. Port Angeles is full of weird, anti-social people with less social skills than people in Wyoming, if you can imagine. Great service at the restaurant, though. I had bleu cheese and fig ravioli with roasted chicken, chanterelles, and corn.
Politics has kept me interested a little bit lately. I'm so so happy to be out of the south, because now I don't have to hear the racist, social conservative banter at work about how much the world is doomed because of Obama. I still get to see it occasionally on Facebook, where someone on my wife's list recently posted: 'I took my last vacation today before Obama takes everything away.' But the distance makes it funny. I think what this election has said is that the "real america" that Palin talks about is still there. But the unpatriotic america that they heap scorn upon, the liberal, rational, progressive, America, has finally edged them out. Maybe now we get to be the real America for a change. I would love to see an election in my lifetime that looked like Libertarians vs. Democrats vs. Green Party, where the Democrats are the centrists, and the spectre of social conservatism can stop embarrassing us on the international scale that it does now.
I never realized what a societal parasite the belief that "the world is nearing the end times" could be. When you don't believe that one simple idea, you can get so much done. Suddenly, problems are there to be solved, not observed as signs that the end times were nearing. Eliminating that one concept from public discourse makes ecologically sound policies possible. It makes long term planning in government possible- and popular. I saw a sign up yesterday announcing an event planned for 2036- that would have been seen as an assault on religion in a lot of the country. It's so refreshing to meet so many people that don't reach for that stale idea just the instant they see something bad in their city.
My "new" life is keeping me busy. There's a new fruit to try at the roadside stand every other day- persimmons and apples and grapes so big my hands feel small just eating them, so much to learn about IT and teaching, etc. Although the learning has really slowed down lately in tech.
I'm continuing my hiatus from music for a while longer while I save for an MPC. I'm just not feeling the drive now that there is so little struggle in my life. Life is so easy when you have enough money to stop worrying, and you don't have that "surrounded by maniacs" feeling.

Working Tons.

2008-09-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

If I haven't called you lately, it's because I've recently started doing about 60 hour weeks. I'm a systems administrator for a network with about 1500 objects and several thousand users during the day, and I'm still teaching an enrichment course for a nonprofit course in the afternoon. It's going to be really hard for me to give up the money from the nonprofit, and hard to tell them that I'm too exhausted because I really enjoy the work.
The upside to this is that for the first time in my life, I actually have the choice whether or not to work, and I have designated some expendable in our budget. I'm thinking that this month or next, I will grab an MPC1000BK-N so I can play with music a bit without having to look at a computer. I'm growing a little tired of that. I can tell already though, my new job is going to teach me so much. It pays peanuts, but if I can learn as much as I think, I'll just grab a couple of certifications and go private sector after a year or two.
After a long and protracted university career, it feels really good to just work.

Dear People of the Kitsap/Olympic Peninsula:

2008-08-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Your food is awful. Just awful. Should I have to fly East to get good Mexican food? I won't drop names, because I have not had any Mexican worth recommending since I got West of the Mississippi River. Not sure if it's the Scandinavian heritage here or what, but the people of this area like the blandest food in the universe. I can't even find a decent brewpub, the only one I have yet been to, Silver City, has an atmosphere like Applebee's and I can't stand it.
The irony of this is, of course, that I can jump on a ferry for 45 minutes and be in the center of one of the best food cultures in the world: Pike Place Market. I just don't know what the problem is with getting that food to come across the Sound.
There are four noble exceptions that do deserve mention on the Peninsula:
La Poblanita has great Mexican food. It's real, and includes a nice little grocery store attached.

Luigi's Baking has the best bread I've ever had. If you like the Jewish burnt bakery taste, you will love this.

Hi-Lo's I'm not even sure if it's the food or just the unbelievably good mood everybody is in when I go there.

New Delhi Restaurant I cannot tell you how thankful I am to have good Indian food in town.

Please, please patronize these people so that they stay in business and do well. If there was one of these on every corner, this would be a 100% better place to live!

This has been a public service announcement.

Free MP3 Album release: Sound That Can Kill or Cure

2008-08-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

It's been more than a year now since I released Sound That Can Kill or Cure. It's clear at this stage that I've squeezed every dime out of it, but I still want as many people as possible to hear it. So here's a link to the entire record, encoded at 320VBR.

deltasleep- Sound That Can Kill or Cure

The record is offered under Creative Commons License, meaning that you have my permission to enjoy your brains out, and pass it around to everybody you want. But making money off of this record is not allowed under this license.

Sound That Can Kill or Cure by deltasleep, David Caudill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I do accept donations, if you feel so inclined. You can click the button below to paypal me whatever you think it's worth.

Three Classic Records I Never Heard of

2008-08-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of those experiences lately where I wonder if I am dreaming or hallucinating them. Like the other day when I was driving by a hotrod shop/junkyard in the mountains that had a sign up advertising a concert.(my dream venue since watching Fat Albert) or when I first turned on the Chilton Talentmaker and wondered when I would start hearing the annoying beep of my alarm clock to wake me up from what was, in all honesty, one of the happiest moments of my life.
I picked up three records the other day from a super, super cheap thrift store, who mysteriously charged me 16 cents for them(do the math, how?). They were:
Hugo Montenegro Interprets the Genius of Stevie Wonder: Hugo in Wonder-Land
This record occupies a weird space in between prog-rock, jazz, Stevie Wonder, and moog records. That's no easy feat, and the record has its share of problems with pacing, most of which originate from the issue of having to make vocal pop songs into non-boring instrumentals. A lot of vocal pop is very repetitive, with the lyrics being enough of a driving element to hold the song together through repetition. Try making an instrumental of Heard it Through the Grapevine some time if you want to understand. So things get a little aimless, and a little too long in places. But this record is well worth your time if you are a fan of Moog records, because its sound is much, much more contemporary than any other Moog record I've heard. "Shoo-Bee-Doo-Bee-Doo-Da-Day" is the highlight- the "vocals" are just too much to miss. Lots of good ARP sounds on the record, and lots of good sample and hold work.

Ferrante and Teicher: How High the Moon
I'll confess to not being the best read on F&T. I know from years of digging through thrift store bins that they sold more records of their type than almost anybody, and that most of them are complete fluff- by my standards. But if this record is any indication, I should have been paying more attention. This is a much, much stranger record than the minimal Pickwick, public domain image cover would indicate. In fact, the only thing that attracted me to this record was the space theme. This record was an unexpected mix of tape loops, prepared piano, and the standard F&T fluff. Just imagine trying to make that concept sound normal while you cover The Mood was Yellow. The song is absolutely, positively one of the most interesting covers of one of my favorite pieces of music ever. A strange tape loop of pizzicato strings and tacked piano and whatever sounds a lot like a synth with a tuned resonant filter on noise.
Supersonics in Flight: Billy Mure:
I bought this because I thought it might be a teen beat record, and it mostly is. The rest is pretty flat, but the guitar tone is worth listening to. It's a good thing that Billy Mure's guitar and amplifier are "specially modified to produce extreme highs." There's a tagline you won't be hearing much on today's records.
But who cares about today's records.

Supremely Unlikely Event

2008-08-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

Take a look at what Victoria found in our door jam a second ago. What are the chances of this? (If you can't tell, a big fat fly has been smashed by the closing door!)
Had a great time this weekend going to Bainbridge Island two days in a row. I can tell already it's going to be a regular weekend destination- lots of good restaurants and things that Victoria likes to smell.

A Little Music

2008-08-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

I've been listening a lot lately, since I haven't really had time to make a lot of music. Working as a technology educator has kept me really happy and busy with computers. Having Victoria home all the time has kind of kept me busy once I get home. So I grabbed a little time yesterday to DJ a quick set of music I have been enjoying. Soulseek has been withering away to nothing lately, and I have been trying to scramble for a way to get access to the kind of music I enjoy in mp3 lately. Torrents are great for more popular acts, but they are pretty void of older material or obscurity. Most of the LP Sharity blogs I was frequenting have either gotten lazy or just faded. It's kind of renewed my drive lately to keep
the sharing alive.
Lately I've also been enjoying KEXP Seattle a little- if you catch the right show, they are great. So I'm kind of facing the problem that a lot of working adults do- I don't have the hours upon hours to sift through records that I used to, and I need a quick easy way to get introduced to lots of music that's new to me.

It Works!

2008-08-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, I got my new needle for the KLH in the mail today. Even though I know I shouldn't have, I put it back together from it's state of partial disassembly to give it a try. And it works- it sounds fantastic. So now I need to clean the boxes out of the basement so I have room to sit and listen to every record I own! Right now, it's Surf Party by the Astronauts.

Most Wonderful Summer Weather Keeps Me from Working on Music or Blogging

2008-08-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

I know I've been a little absentee lately, but the weather has been so amazing that I have to be outside any chance I get. The woods right now are full of wild salal, red huckleberries, black berries, marionberrys, rasberries, and oregon-grapes. The stuff absolutely carpets the forest floor. I found at least a full acre of salal, and the blackberries grow so aggresively that the state has a hard time keeping them off the interstate. I grabbed mine from a school parking lot. They're not quite in yet, but the sunnyside edges are starting to be ready. I also found the awesome diner that the crazy lady down the road told me about when we moved in. It's called "Hi-Lo's 15th Street Diner." She's just kind of slow and told us it was on 13th street. Apparently they make their biscuits in a waffle iron and it's a real walk in and choose your own mug kinda place. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks great! It's right next door to what is easily the best bakery I've ever eaten from: Luigi's Baking. It's a really, really simple place on the good side of a lousy block. Victoria walked in to get bread from the place and realized they don't take debit. They told her to just take it and come by and pay "one of these days." Everything we have thus far eaten is unbelievable, with a fantastic just barely burnt but moist taste. Far and away the best bread I've ever had- Europe included. I consider myself a pretty harsh bread critic- I had actually given up on bread because I'd rather not eat it than eat grocery store bread. But seriously, this is some genius bread.
We got it at the Bremerton farmer's market first, same night we got fresh marionberries and rasberries, black kale, baby yukon golds, fresh beets, dahlias, summer squash, and carrots. Luigi's apprentice actually gave us a flower sack that he had made into a grocery bag.
Also discovered a great beer: Buffalo Bill's Orange Blossom Ale. It's a strange and delicious orange blossom wheat ale. All the things I like about a Hefeweizen with orange, but with a little floral note. Citrus flavors don't mix well when bottled with beer, so this is a rare find, in my opinion. Really nice orange bitterness. Great summer beer, I think it's a seasonal west coast beer. And it's dirt cheap here.
So yeah, I've been busy here. I love it, I feel like every day is an adventure full of wild bounty, beautiful scenery, amazing food, and bald eagles. I'm most impressed that none of the things I'm most enjoying aren't costing me much money. Once we get stabilized financially and can start paying down our debts, I think I'll be permanently hooked here. Once I get some free time, I can't wait to get back to music. And the can't wait feeling is always good for music!

2008-07-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been on the market for a stereo since I've moved. I've finally got the space to get a big deafening stereo. I had been thinking I wanted to put together a silver era 70s stereo of stuff like marantz/mcintosh/pioneer/sansui equipment, and then this stereo fell into my lap. Feast your eyes on the totally awesome KLH Model 20+.

(this is not my picture- mine is dirtier and has one cabinet sanded down right now) Apparently in the 1960's, KLH was a boutique brand. They have since, of course, been reduced to the ultimate humiliation of being sold by radio shack.
Anyways, it was not working when I picked it up. So I paid $20 for it. It will need a cartridge, new grills at some point, and the solid walnut cabinets will be refinished once I have the money to buy the tools I need.
The only real problem was with the speaker connections flaking out, but that's an easy fix. Worst case scenario is that I have 3 of the coolest end tables you've ever seen.
Until then, the radio sounds so good on this that I actually sat down and listened to it this morning. The radio!
I also grabbed a Tourney 10 speed at the same house that just happened to also be on craigslist, for $15. Just an older Sears bike, but with a rack and a little better knowledge of the city I live in, it'll be my new best friend. It's obviously not been used a lot, as the owner had a kryptonite lock on it and lost the key. So now I have the job of trying to dremel or saw or whatever through a cable.

I knew I was in the right place when the lady selling the stereo says to me "you don't do transfer of LPs to CD or mp3 do you?" and I kind of sheepishly said yeah I guess. So she comes downstairs with a copy of "Soul Flutes: Trust in Me"
I had to do that record for free, it was her favorite record and I knew I'd enjoy it. Turns out its a real greasy piece of soft psych light jazz with herbie mann (or hubert laws,CTI doesn't know?!) and I've got tons of stuff to recommend.
I can tell that the area is going to be a great one to watch craigslist for. It's got a long history of wealthy old people with expensive taste, so these garages are just teeming with this kind of thing!

Talentmaker Restoration

2008-07-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I opened up the Talentmaker and got the old can of component cleaner out to go to work in it. It was filthy. Full of sowbugs and roaches and little plastic tags from clothing. The entire inside was coated with a cigarette smoke yellow dust that wouldn't wipe off without component cleaner. I replaced the drive belt with a standard postal rubber band, and I fixed an arm tension problem with a strip of electrical tape. So I'm happy to say now that the instrument will start, turn off, and lift to let me change disks like brand new. Until I swapped the belt, it was kind of a routine that I would have to put the belt back on. So now it's been completely cleaned and it's holding a tune rock solid- according to my junky guitar tuner and my even less reliable ears. So the total cost of fix was under a dollar so far.
Somehow, after putting it back together I now have a ground issue. If I can't isolate it, I'll just have to ground the jack to the stainless steel plate with the chord buttons.
I'd post a picture, but my stupid camera likes to have dead batteries more often than not.

The sample above is, of course, the "Cocktail piano" disk. As you can hear, the Talentmaker holds a steady beat, and has a lot higher fidelity than the Optigan. The highs get a lot better as you slide the mixer toward the chords section. It actually surprised me how well this sounds on a lot of the disks.
Here's the list of disks I have:

Hawaii 4/4
Hawaii 3/4
German Band
Polka
Guitar Waltz
Bounce-A-Long
Cocktail Piano
Marching Band
Dixieland
Rhumba Rhythm
Skating Rink Waltz
Organ

I also have the following literature from this sale:

Talentmaker Contempo Hits
Talentmaker Sacred Songs
John M Williams Older Beginner's Piano Book (1946)
The Chord Organ Library: Country Gold
Chilton Talentmaker Optical Organ Manual
Optigan Oldies and Evergreens

Oh, and one more thing. The Dixieland Disc is hilarious:

YES! Chilton Talentmaker!

2008-07-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

So, even though I am pretty po-broke right now, I still keep an eye on craigslist for interesting junk that might float through town. Wouldn't you know it, there was a Chilton Talentmaker on the Kitsap musical instruments list. The Talentmaker is a patent infringer on the Optigan and Orchestron, but is said to be more reliable than the Optigan. Thats not saying much- mine is functioning because of electrical tape in two places, and it needs a new rubber drive belt.
Now, it's really difficult to judge how rare something like this is. So far as I can tell, it extremely rare- enough that it's difficult to discern its value. But I'm pretty sure that it's worth more than the $40 I paid for it. It was owned by a schizo hoarder who died and left no family to claim anything of hers. The people who sold it to me
had just kind of moved in to her mess and were digging through it all.
So I've been a giddy, bouncy ball of energy all day. It came with TONS of discs and song books- not tested it yet, but I think it even has an OUTPUT!'
The instrument is a huge inspiration-especially with the discs in upside down so that the accompaniment plays backward.
So I don't know if I exactly got one of those once-in-a-lifetime deals moneywise- but it is far and away the rarest thing I will probably ever own...

Earfl Example

2008-07-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of what I was talking about in the earlier post:

Spiders Make Me Pee

I like the story because I get the impression that whomever told it was under the impression that it would never make it onto the internet, or gain a public audience.

Growing Archive of Anonymous, Strange Stories

2008-07-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

Earfl.com has recently launched a website that aims to archive the "juicy secrets" - received by phone, of as many people as they can. I've not yet decided whether I think this is creepy or fascinating, or whether I even like it. But it does have that crucial car accident quality of "you can't look away" to it.
Stories are archived under categories, and participants are typically responding to a prompt something like "tell us something you'd like to forget" or "what is a secret you have been keeping for someone else." I haven't heard anything really graphic yet- but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's out there. The prompts tend to dig pretty deep into "I would never tell anyone this in person" kind of territory.
Since the stories are completely anonymous, you never know who is pulling your leg, but I think most of the stories I heard were believable. If you get a bored moment, you might want to check it out some time.

Great Way to Learn Mixing

2008-07-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm sure that this is not "kosher." But I stumbled upon one of the best learning experiences and interesting exercises I've ever had. While browsing about a torrent search, I noticed that you can actually find multitrack WAV bundles of some songs. Right now I'm playing with "Heard it Through the Grapevine"- it's actually just 8 mono tracks! I'm also gonna be playing with Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" when it's done.
Grapevine is really interesting because that great drum sound that I've always liked so much is so much different than I thought it was! Upon listening to it in isolation, it's really distorted. It's really interesting how much the recording carries the illusion of "stereo image" without actually being in stereo. I truly have no idea how you do that. I think that the sound I really like from these recordings is coming from lots and lots of instruments playing the same parts- and it really carries the effect I desire with or without panning. The whole mix is overdriven, but there doesn't really sound like there's a lot of EQ or compression- really any effects at all. This leads me to believe that these sessions really are as simple as they're fabled: nice hardware and no fuss. It sounds like these setups weren't tweaked to be exactly right, nothing was made perfect, tons and tons of noise and people talking in the background, etc.
It's an interesting experience and you should play with them if you are interested in recording or music.

Rebirth of the 1970's

2008-07-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

So, it's a recession, gas crisis, a couple of really lousy presidents, American car makers struggling to downsize their fleet fast enough to meet demand for high efficiency vehicles, etc. There are a lot of things going on that make me think my era is going to resemble the 1970's. Not the least of which is an economic recession and a strong public outcry to end a foreign war that's been going on too long. It makes sense that the hobbies and interests of depressed eras will have a lot in common, and that economic recession will have americans looking back to see what others have done for fun or money when there wasn't a lot of either around. It seems like people's style starts to get a little more ornate and rich- less of the clean square lines of the 1950s, 80s, and 90s and more of the embellished edges. People start to see things like music and art in a different light- it's hard to take music seriously when you have so many people with real, serious, problems. So I expect to see a lot more dancing, and a lot more sounds of disco and folk. Probably even some "ironic" take on using an actual string section for disco strings in music.
I'm not the only one who has had this thought on my mind for awhile now, apparently. I'm seeing a total resurgence in late 1970s obsession with the 1930s. I'm also seeing things like rollerderby, silver-era stereo refurbishing, movies about the 1930's, rollerskates(not blades), and knee socks popping back up(or is that Bremerton?). I am even seeing 1970s furniture(probably the worst thing about the 1970s) start to get bought up and repainted. I assume everybody else sees the bigger picture when they start a rollerderby league- but they may not. So what I'm wondering is: what are the musical signs of this stylistic change?
I know it's still 3-5 years off, but the rumblings are here now. And if you want to make a buck from it, jump on board.

Cafe Campagne is on the Ball!

2008-07-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

So, I just happened to be comparing stats with my wife's blog yesterday, and I noticed a referrer from an email inbox at Cafe Campange. Apparently they have some kind of service that's emailing them every time some sort of review goes live on the web for their restaurant. I'm going to choose to believe that, and not that they are trying to send cease and desist notices to anyone hosting bad reviews...
But I'm pretty impressed that somebody followed that link to my blog in under 24 hours from it's being posted. So now their probably going to follow another link just to read this. I should add them as a tag to every post from now on so that they have to read my blog.

Finally, A Trip to Seattle!

2008-07-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

So, my wife and I finally mustered the courage to try and figure out that darned ferry system. We were so happy that we could walk from home to the ferry, then from the terminal on the other side we could walk to all kinds of things in Seattle. Round trip for both of us, the tickets cost $13.40. It's pretty fun to be able to navigate a city without a car. So much less stress- I would HATE to have to find parking down there, and it would have been considerably more expensive to drive there than take the ferry. We ate lunch at Cafe Campagne . It was about $25 for both of us to eat, and the food was the best I've had since we got here. I got a lamb-burger with aioli, roasted red peppers, greens, balsamic onions, and french fries fried in duck fat. She got a tuna baguette with an olive tapenade and greens, with a couple fennel-y gherkins on the side. Service was great! We were really braced to meet the kind of jerks you meet in touristy urban areas. Instead, everybody we met was just as nice as they had been in Portland. Got coffee at a little place called the "Chocolate Box." It was adorable inside, but their roast was a little too blonde, and the baristo let half my espresso run down the drain. That's after they forgot my order and served 3-4 people before me. But I was impressed at some characteristics of the house blend- it can be tough to get a lighter roast without making it too tart.
It was a great day. We didn't have the money- but we needed something to remind us why we went through all this trouble. Seattle feels so full of possibility and variety. I felt like I had poked through every nook and cranny of Nashville. I had gotten to the point of getting the Nashville phone book to look for random things to do- and not finding much in the way of anything that interested me any more. Seattle has so much left to see, and so much of it is within a pretty quick walk and a relaxing ferry ride of my front door.
So we're a lot happier about our decision than we were yesterday.

Almost Settled In.

2008-06-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend it got hot. I went to turn up the AC, and I found it was not working. We thought for SURE that this house had AC, since the thermostat had a switch for it. Well, before I made my angry "the AC is broken and my house is 85" call to the property managers, I went downstairs. Where I found that the copper tubing that should go to an AC unit instead ends welded shut about 3 inches down.
So it was 90 outside all weekend and we have a house with no AC. We went to Wal-Mart to grab some fans, and we find everybody else in town is doing the same thing. Apparently air conditioning is not a real common feature in housing here, so we didn't get totally duped by an owner, we just should have known that most houses don't have it. So I'm assuming that it doesn't get this hot very often.
I got another flickr account, so to keep up with photos I'm taking you can use this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28121631@N02/
Catchy URL, I know.
We got a ton more stuff out of boxes this weekend, namely the LP collection, but it's hard to want to do anything in weather like this. The basement is really nice, so we moved a lot of stuff out of the sweltering and now unusable upstairs and down there. My new job is a blast, and I look forward to it most days.

It's So Beautiful Here

2008-06-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

Took a walk today at Scenic Beach Park in Seabeck. We were amazed at the drive there and back- the clouds cleared up at we came over a big hill and we realized that mountains had been there all the time. It was about 65 at 4:00. No rain today, either!
Every last little space is full off moss. According to a sign by the beach, this park is home to octopi, oysters, a lot of unique crabs, and whales. I didn't see any of them though. The woods are new-growth green, and full of tropical looking purple, fuscia, and orange flowers. I ate a couple salmon berries that were growing near the path- the bushes don't even have thorns! A lot of the trees go hundreds of feet high, and are coated with mosses all the way up. These woods are going to be SO full of fungi in the fall. All the fallen trees, silt, loam, and moisture will be the perfect environment.
It's so strange being in a forest where I can't identify even a single plant. I'm not just in a new ecosystem- I'm in a new biome.
I can't wait to see what I can grow in my yard, and I look forward to being able to afford some plants to play with. The new house won't have a lot of yard, but it'll have enough space to play with a little.

Day 2: Western Nebraska through Wyoming and Utah to Idaho.

2008-06-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was amazing. Nebraska was so very boring, but it was like the instant we crossed into Wyoming things got really interesting. Snow capped mountains and enormous wind turbines. Saw a TON of Antelope, birds of prey, and prairie dogs. We didn't realize how cold it was until we hopped out at a rest stop wearing sandals and t shirts. Wyoming is the neo-nazi capital of America, too. Every single bathroom had nazi graffiti, I saw nazi tattoos, nazi bumper stickers, even a nazi biker gang.
Then we got into Utah, and it was the most beautiful place we'd ever seen. All in all it was an amazing day until the very end. We got tired at about 8- the usual time, and we decided to find a hotel. We drove almost 200 miles until we found one. So right now we're in Heyburn Idaho, and I anticipate us getting to our destination by tonight! Can't believe there's only 12 more hours left!
Can't believe I'd ever be excited that my car trip only had 12 hours MORE to go.
Took a lot of pictures today, I'll upload some tonight or tomorrow.

Smells Like Steak

2008-06-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

Right now it's early morning at the Ogallala Nebraska hotel I'm staying at. I could smell steak the whole time I was here, because the hotel is between two steakhouses and a truckstop steak place. We got a steak at some kind of cheesy tourist restaurant- The Golden Spur. The food was really pretty good, but the service was awful. We sat next to three Parisians who were making fun of how fat all the waitresses were. They were also explaining, in great detail, what the cuts of meat on the menu meant. They seemed to think it was really cool to throw peanut shells on the floor.
Nebraska was a boring, boring drive. Nothing but flooded fields as far as we could see until just the last little shred of our trip.
St. Louis was terrifying to drive through- in the middle of the white knuckle death ride we were taking through town(St. Louis has exits and merging on BOTH sides of the road) they have a full motion billboard showing...a girl eating a sandwich. 50 feet of enjoying a sandwich.
I'm looking forward to some of today's drive, because Google Earth shows us going into some more interesting geography. Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska were so boring.
I can't wait to upload the picture I got of yesterday's hotel. Their were a couple of cars on bricks outside of it that looked like they had been their since the 60s.

Tomorrow is the big day!

2008-06-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished a paper plate dinner on my front porch. I can mooch wifi from a neighbor, but only from the front porch of my house. This time of year the weather is so miserable here that you can only be even reasonably comfortable at night- I'm still a sweaty mess from the humidity-it's 85 at night!
We are pretty sure we have crossed every t and dotted every lower case j on our current place- and I've requested a pickup of the two storage containers that have dominated the view from my front window for a day and a half now. I cannot believe how much junk we have- if I ever make a move like this again, I will sell every last thing I own.
I landed a job- tolerable pay and it actually sounds like fun. It involves working with technology creatively with kids, a perfect match for me. I'm surprised anybody hires on a phone interview, but then years of telephone diplomacy for UPS have honed my phone skills.
We're consistently surprised with how casual and relaxed everyone is that we talk to on the phone. I really feel comfortable being myself around people from outside the south and I forget that sometimes. Victoria has two interviews scheduled already- I think she's a shoe-in for either job.
I just heard what sounded like a horrible motor cycle crash in the far distance on the highway.

So tomorrow morning I will drag my tightly wound apartment manager through the place and give her the keys. We'll hit the road with some cash and with any luck we'll be in town by the 9th or 10th of June.
Can't wait to see what happens! Now I have to get back to scraping up the last remaining tasks on this apartment. I was not entirely honest when I said we had dotted the lower case j's.

deltasleep

2008-05-28T10:38:00.001-07:00

Things We Lost with the Death of the Record Industry

2008-05-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time bidding good riddance to the record industry here. That's only because, for whatever reason, I only consider the last 20 years when I talk about the record industry in the context of copyright management. But the generation of producers before the ones that drove the industry into the ground are a real loss to American culture.

Jobs: Goes without saying, but a lot of jobs got flushed. Oh sure, you can technically still get a job arranging strings or horns, but it's even less likely now than it has ever been. And in the present climate, you no longer get to just be an arranger. You've got to be an arranger and a producer and most importantly, an entrepreneur. At least the record industry had management to think about this stuff for us. But listen to a recording like Harold Melvin and the Blue Note's Don't Leave Me This Way. You've probably got to employ 2-3 people just to place all the microphones and maintain the equipment. Then there's a string arranger, 3-4 string players at least, and the list goes on. I seriously doubt that those string players were also trying to hold down a full time boring job and use social networking sites to promote themselves. Because there was a larger organization to be part of, they were able to specialize.

Quality: I'm not saying I don't know a lot of brilliant independent engineers and producers. I'm saying that I don't know many of them who get to work on a Neve board the size of Minnesota with a plate verb and a 2" tape setup. Without the institutions that were record labels, it's nearly impossible to afford the quality facilities that existed in the past. These resources were completely squandered by the 1980s, however. Take a listen to a Duran Duran record if you want to hear the miserable, flat, blurry sound that I'm talking about. I blame cassettes, the only medium I reserve more hatred for than CDs. The era of digital instruments brought about a lot of real opportunity to expand the options for the musician. Instead, they were used to do crappy approximations of what we were doing really well for the preceding 30 years. They put a lot of people out of a job, and they reduced the quality of recordings dramatically.

Freedom From Choice: The options available to the average listener now are so enormous. Most mp3 player users spend the entire time fiddling with them. I wonder if a song even gets finished anymore. Fact is, the way the human attention span is, having 300 songs just means that what you're listening to isn't quite the exact song or mood you'd like to be listening to. The average schmuck had fewer choices in the 1970s than he does today, and those choices were higher quality. When I listen to Tears of a Clown and I imagine that it used to be popular, I imagine a society with a lot more dignity, and a lot higher standards than the society that made "Soulja Boy" a number 1 hit.

People choose music that they think is a vice, that they feel is bad for them. It sold metal, it sold rap. If you want your kid not to listen to this stuff, tell them it's good for them. That it will make them smarter. Given the option of choices they perceive as negative, the public typically takes them. The record industry acted as a tastemaker, and for some time they did a pretty good job. Once their work in this department became so awful though, public contempt toward them started building. But thats like hating a baker who made something so delicious and bad for you. On the other hand, that might not be as absurd as it sounded before cities started banning trans fats. Anyways, their obviously miserable taste turned the entire peripheral industry against them.
Ultimately, I think that the real killer of the record industry was this decline in quality. But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Most of our society's greatest recordings were made with the help of a system that was dying a slow painful death when my generation put it out of its misery. I still won't miss them, because I can't forgive them for the 1980s and 90s.

I'm Just Going to DO IT!

2008-05-11T10:58:00.001-07:00

After much deliberating and wimping around worrying about things, we've decided not to be cowards, and just to move out West. Kitsap County Washington, to be exact. For less than the price of a house in the Nashville area, we can rent one with a bay or lake view in Bremerton or Port Orchard. Jobs pay better, the food is better, the politics are better, the schools are better, and hopefully from there we can make a better decision about whether to move to Seattle or Portland.
Map of Our Trip
Our trip will lead us through: Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington. I'm allowing 4 days for the trip by car, 5-6 if by van. I'm budgeting about $1100 for gas alone. By my estimate, to stay entertained the entire time I will need to burn about 36-40 CDs, haha.

So, in about 30-40 days, I need to:

paint 2 rooms back to boring, flat white.
Get a binding quote on moving 1100 sq ft of junk.
notify my old job- I'll actually miss those people the most.
notify Los Cuates that this will be my last order or Tacos de Asada.
do some phone work on getting a new rental property
fill out every public school system in the area's application(which are all crappy, and all different)
complete my application for a WA teacher's license
throw away the junk I don't want
collect tons and tons of boxes and packing material
buy long range walkie-talkies
buy a second GPS
get a credit card(groan)
fill out the paperwork and begin fighting with my landlords about what I owe them.
clean our townhome from top to bottom
find some way to effectively store and move about 400-500 LPs and 100 45s.
Consider whether to sell my truck or drive it all the way across the country. (gas mileage calculations and the gas cost weighed against the value of the vehicle)
Turn off the cable, power, water, YMCA, and hopefully get out of a couple of lousy cell phone contracts.

yikes.

It Starts.

2008-05-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Well, turns out that the lady who came by a department meeting to talk about our records was wrong. Or the person on the phone was wrong at Records.
They say that there is "no way I can learn whether or not I graduated on the phone or on the web. I need to come by window 12 in the A building. "
If the lady at the meeting was right, then I did not successfully graduate. If she was wrong, I might still get my degree in the mail sometime around the middle of May.

The Worst Feeling in the World

2008-05-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Ok. I just finished my federal Stafford Loan Exit Interview. Their budget calculator estimates my annual discretionary income will be $-14,000.
I'll be paying either $178/mo for 30 years or $308/mo for 10 years. For a job that pays $30,000.
I also found out that those programs that help teachers repay student loans only apply to Perkins loans, and not Stafford Loans.
So, all that whining about feeing bad about not getting to make music. Forget that happened.
This is the worst feeling in the whole world.
I've got to leave teaching, because I can't afford to do it.

Today is the Day

2008-05-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the day I find out whether the patched together, hacked up transcript I have at MTSU was effectively processed by the office of Records at MTSU. My experience at MTSU has been demoralizing and negative.
MTSU manages a Soviet-style bureaucracy of an unbelievable scale. For instance, today on PipelineMT (MTSU's online student access to transcripts and registration) there's a message that transcripts will be unavailable until May 7th(which you'll notice is today's date). MTSU's real talent has always been telling students a plan, how things are going to happen, and then changing them without notifying them. In my time at the University, maybe 3 years, my "sheet" (classes I have to take) has changed upwards of 3 times. On not one of those occasions was I notified within a semester. Each time I went to my adviser with what was apparently now an old sheet.
Urban legends float around Universities in situations like these. My department, Elementary and Special Education, did such a poor job disseminating correct information that these myths took hold on a huge scale. Most people think that an upper division form/list of classes to take, is a contract. Wrong. MTSU reserves the right to change that sheet right out from underneath you at any time. They all come with an expiration date, and woe unto those who sign onto the sheet near the time when they are changed. Now thats not to say that they can't change it in between listed change times. And it's not to say that you should even expect to find a sheet available. In my 3 years at MTSU there has been either no upper division form, or a "draft form" for three semesters.
So I'm sitting here, with a knot in my guts. I know that I have done every single thing I can do to get a degree. I know that all the t's are crossed and there should be no problem. I also know that I've done that three times before and arrived at records to find nothing of any kind on file for me. Apparently those three times were "bad times to submit files to records." They were changing computer systems, so, I kid you not, "almost everything submitted in that time was completely lost." I know that in the end, there's every real possibility that MTSU will pull one last stunt. I completely expect it. I'm already planning the tirade will deliver, finally, after all this butt kissing. After all the times MTSU has asked me to go and pretend to be a really sweet guy who just happened to have his sub forms screwed up or lost for the 3rd time. This time, I will not be so sweet. Yeah right. I know with that fat, lazy bunch of desk chair Bolsheviks in- cubicles covered with Garfield and Cathy cartoons- the only way I am going to get anything done is to act like they're really doing me a big favor.

MTSU has been like an abusive relationship for years now. Anxiety about this experience has dominated my life for nigh on six and a half years. I've spent the whole time saying "what did I do wrong? who should I have talked to about this? how could I have know that this changed? how can I take control of this problem and monitor it so this doesn't happen again?"
I'm done. MTSU: I can't wait until our divorce papers are official and I never have to think about you again. Nothing will make me feel more free than to never have to think about you again.

My Wife Has a Blog

2008-05-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd mention that my wife has a blog as of this afternoon. I think she's totally hooked on the concept.
You can find it here:
EauMG

First Song in a While

2008-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

After about 5 months of 70 hour weeks, I am done with student teaching! It's going to take me years to fully understand what just happened to me... but, I'm alive now and I've got a little time to decompress.
Dark Desert
Wrote this dumb song today, just because I hadn't recorded anything or picked up an instrument in months. I forgot how much I missed the challenge and creativity of recording.

Caught!

2008-04-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up to the sound of pipes being hammered on. Or the sound of water hitting a large glass table on the patio, or was it as terrible rumbling in the attic...
My squirrel that has been terrorizing the house and boring holes into my ceiling was stuck in a trap in the attic. Except the pest control man got fired by the apartment people, and nobody even knew the trap was in my attic. I waited all day for a call back from the pest man to see if he wanted his trap. So finally I just got out the gloves and drug the cage full of blurry rodent panic out of the attic, removing half of the insulation from the attic and dumping it on my sink.
I left it on the landlord's steps.

Still not dead

2008-03-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to drop by here and let friends and family know that i'm not dead- i'm just miserably busy. I've completed the first half of my student teaching experience, and I start the next half this monday. I dread it beyond belief- 8th grade math at an inner city middle school. It's almost comedic how similar this is to a Chevy Chase movie, or a nightmare. I can't wait for this to end. There seriously is no job on earth that i wouldn't take over this if it paid the same.

Disco Squaredance.

2008-02-06T14:31:00.000-08:00

Wow. And who would have guessed a group of people as crass and rugged as the american pioneers would ever have such an ornate and elaborate system of dance?

I've been sooooo busy with the student teaching. You can check my other blog on that topic:
http://lifeontheothersideofthedesk.blogspot.com/

eee pc!

2008-01-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

this is my first blog from my brand new 2g asus eee pc. really hard to get use to, so far. the keys are so tiny... but the thing is just so darned cute!
I have the green one. Next month, i'm planning on picking up a good sized SDHC card for the unit. This might be a great chance to pick up and try a couple little linux sound programs.
Speaking of which, this is my first time using linux, and I think I love it.
Not much time for music lately- student teaching and work combined are rapidly approaching 70 hours a week.

Student Teaching "experience" begins THIS WEEK!

2008-01-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

I just got a letter today from my department that I should have gotten weeks ago thats telling me to contact my teacher and principal "immediately" to begin volunteer experience on the 3rd. Somehow I'm supposed to have them type up a letter giving me permission to show up and "volunteer" and build up some sick days. All this is, of course, not going to happen in the two days I have between now and the 14th.
Awesome, thanks again MTSU.
I thought I was an exception because of that call I got a couple weeks back saying "oh HAI, u kno u needz 8 class to graduate, RAIT?" (turns out none of the substitutions that I've filed a bajillion times have even been processed)
Have I explained this here before, because I forget. I've gone through this so many times now I can't even keep track of what the latest fiasco is with them. It's not that the individuals I'm dealing with are inept- most of them aren't. What I'm dealing with "institutional incompetence." That's the business management class way of saying that the whole place should be bulldozed, the rubble burnt and plowed under, and something more useful built in its place. Something like, say, and applebee's, a chili's, and a wal-mart. Then the 10 acres of swampland we now know as MTSU would completely blend in with the rest of Murfreesboro.
When I think about MTSU, this unknown singer's version of Helter Skelter is describing exactly how I feel, but with too much feeling to describe how I feel about it:
Helter Skelter

I am so, so, so sick of MTSU. I am not walking the line, I am snatching the diploma out of record's hand as soon as I see it, making a copy, and putting the original in a fireproof safe. I'm out of energy to hate the place, and I'm over this. Just give me my diploma, and leave me alone. I want to forget that south Nashville ever happened to me. I wish I could just hibernate now and wake up when all this is over.

Oh yes, and this last week we got the scare of our lives when something in the attack starting loudly chewing down through the ceiling into our living room. Pest guy says it was a squirrel. Hope so!

Whole Foods- Misery.

2007-12-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

I love food, if you know me, you know that. I always thought I was a food snob, or a foodie or whatever- and then I met some of those people. They have the same kind of attitude that guitar snobs and audiophiles have. It's the same thread of OCD-like behavior that I find in the people I play games with who have 2 8800GTXs in SLI, or the musicians I know who take out enormous loans because an "average guitar is just going to produce average results."
Still, I was really excited when I heard Nashville was finally going to get a Whole Foods. I'd never even been to a Whole Foods before, but I heard they were really nice and had a great selection. So I was really bummed when I got to the nice new Whole Foods and found it a)extremely overpriced and b)full of jerks.
Nashvillians, like most of the Southeast, just don't "get it." I thought when I went to Whole Foods, I would find other people buying, I dunno, Whole Foods? Instead, they've made it just like every grocery store in town, but more expensive. The parking lot is full of luxury cars (I spotted a Rolls Royce and a Ferrari Maranello, among others) that are apparently owned by the same losers who walk through the grocery store buying Totinos pizzas and Bud Light while wearing a thousand dollar suit.
The hypocrisy of obsessing about how your coffee farmer was treated, and then cutting me in line and being a jerk to the workers at the store is so extreme that I don't know if I can handle going back. At first I thought the help at Whole Foods were unprofessional or rude- then I watched how the jerks that come in treat them, and I realized the poor folks are just callous to the abuse that the wealthy patrons have leveled at them. Making $10 and hour to help some schmuck in a dumb-looking outfit worth more than your yearly wage buy mushrooms that are $30/lb. is supremely insulting.
They've also raised the price considerably on almost every single item that Wild Oats once carried. On the sort of items like Totinos(gag) or Boca Burgers (mostly gag), they run about DOUBLE the cost of their more "conventional" counterparts.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm really disappointed in Nashville for this. I had really hoped that the addition of a nice produce section somewhere in town might expand the things people were eating. Instead, I'm finding that the people shopping there aren't doing it for the quality, they're just doing it because it's yet another obnoxious rich thing to do. They're just paying more for the things they'd buy at Piggly Wiggly as a status symbol, instead of taking advantage of all the nice new greens and fruits available to them. That's only going to lead one way(and this is the same thing thats happened to every Publix in town): reduction of selection. If all the Black Cabbage is rotting on the shelf because I was the only person to buy it, they'll stop stocking it.
That same afternoon, after we were so disgusted by Whole Foods, we went over to the CT Farm Fresh market.(across the street from the crappy TN State Farmers Market) Their produce was limited to whats in season, and the prices on everything were amazing. The place is not extremely pretty(ok its not even sort of pretty) but the help is always so nice. The only people there were the cutest hispanic toddler in the world, and her mother. The toddler kept winking at me and waving the whole time, and the guy behind the register was a really friendly coptic egyptian who chatted with me about pomegranates and where I was from. I bought their last Pomegranate, but he said he'll order some soon for me and the other fanatics that come in and want to buy them by the box.
I get along with the immigrant community of Nashville better than any of the other groups for a number of reasons. Food wise, we both like good food and we expect it for a reasonable price. Otherwise, we both feel like outsiders, and are generally lonely, friendly people.
I won't be back to Whole Foods after the prices and service I got at the CT Farm Fresh.(some things at the CT are seriously about 10% of what they are at the WF) I also won't be calling myself a foodie ever again. Seriously, $30/lb for a fungus? Just use something else.

It's a Sunshine Day

2007-12-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, a Brady Bunch cover. This is one of those songs that I know so well I can cover it almost completely from memory. We used to crack up at Bobby's "dig the sunshine line" when I was a kid.
Got the idea when i was plunking around with a synth trying to get a good out of tune organ sound and I accidentally hit the main riff of the song. You know a song is complex when you can play it accidentally. The only song less complex is "I'm a Believer."
deltalsleep- it's a sunshine day

Thanks + Bhangra Mix

2007-11-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to send a great big thanks out to the community here for supporting my record, Sound that Can Kill or Cure.
I released on CDR, and I can't recommend that format enough. I only sold 19 copies of my record- some of that was probably BECAUSE I was using CDR, but I doubt that it was enough that I wouldn't have been royally screwed by a CD duplicator. I also sold one download for $6.
My CD is $12, and so far it looks like about $3 of that is going to postage, ink, and blank media. Not a bad shake for something I was gonna do anyways. Shipping through the USPS is so cheap on something like a CD that I just built that into the cost of the CD, and I've not been burnt on that yet.
The vast majority of my sales went to people I already knew, and most of them occurred within a week of my "releasing" the record.
I know a lot of you are contemplating releases all the time, so I thought this data might be interesting to you. I always wondered how many records you sold when you bought ads on em411 and/or tried out labels and things.
The record/download is still for sale, and occasionally one will just trickle in, which is a good way to make my day!
At the top of the post, in the DivShare player today is a 30minute mix of Bhangra I made, because I've promised a friend I would do so for about 3 years now.

Best Buck Rogers Scene of All Time

2007-11-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

I used to love this horrible show, and I watched a ton of reruns of it on the sci-fi channel before school as a kid. Now that I go back, I realize that I should have been watching the far superior Space: 1999.
Stu Phillips did the soundtrack to this, by the way.

I've been laying pretty low for a couple weeks now, fighting off some kind of bug and wrapping up my final semester of classes- teaching a lot of social studies and a little reading.

Portland Trip

2007-10-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

So, I spent last week in Portland Oregon. We read up on the place a lot before we went, and it really sounded like somewhere we would enjoy relocating to. When you work in public service jobs, you realize really quickly that no matter how cool your city may be, a well run, well paying state is a lot more important. So the possibility of the "if I had to live anywhere else in this state I would move" situation had to be tossed out. There are a lot of surprising and interesting cities in miserable, disorganized, under funded states. Louisville, Austin, Kansas City.
Portland is a lot different. For one, teacher salary in Oregon vs. Tennessee puts me in a position to make a LOT more and retire a LOT earlier. They start out the same, and then after a few years Oregon pulls ahead, with the gap between them as high as $20K at times!
My Review of Portland(What I did on my fall vacation):
Food:
Everywhere we ate except for one place was amazing. I'll spare that place the embarrassment because I'm confident they're doomed anyways. We ate at Esan Thai, and it was the best Thai I've ever had. I had a pumpkin curry that was so hot the steam from it burnt my eyes. I didn't intend for it to be that hot- tolerance for overall food heat seems a lot higher out there. Tons of great pizza, tons of great everything available. People in Portland clearly have very high standards for food and ingredient quality.
But the stunner: had coffee at 5-6 places and it was ALL terrible! The only places serving anything passable were just slinging stuff like Seattle's Best or Tully's. Most of the locally roasted stuff was unbearable.
Oh yeah, and Bubble Tea is amazing. Amazing.
Art:
The majority of the interesting visuals in Portland came in the form of the beautiful downtown buildings. Everywhere it was possible to cram in a local artist's work, it was done. The city looks like a really good place to be as an artist or a musician. I didn't really see anything in particular in the way of visual art that amazed me, but I was very impressed at the good taste in design I saw in most houses and businesses. There's a real emphasis on green spaces within the city, and it's a wonderful thing.
Parks were tucked into every nook and cranny around town. Looking at a map, it would appear that about 40% of Portland's geographic area is public land.
Real Estate:
We think we can hack it money-wise in the city. But I'm not sure how much "hacking it" I want to do. Real Estate is not nearly as expensive as it is elsewhere on the West Coast, and most of the properties we saw were priced fairly. We could get a craftsman/bungalow in a neighborhood we like for about $239K right now. But the sub-prime meltdown has hit that market hard, and I think we'll rent for the first year or two and let it blow over. The market looks like it's going to be flooded with foreclosures soon- TONS of empty condo high-rises downtown asking ridiculous prices.
Gas: about 35-50 cents higher/gallon.
People: way nicer than expected. So nice that they all get in conversations with each other on the trains. People were really surprising, and broke so many of the stereotypes and expectations we had for them. We saw old people that listened to techno and had tattoos. We met an old guy who retired to Portland after holding cue cards for 30 years. He knew Vincent Price . The barriers that exist between people in the Southeast just don't exist as much in Portland. But it would appear that their immigrant communities are a lot more marginalized than ours. As a community, the city of Portland needs to ask itself what it's doing to drive immigrants into all moving to certain neighborhoods.
I met up with 6-7 musicians that I knew in town at a nice little restaurant. We all wore the same glasses, and couldn't figure out why. They were all extremely nice people, and I hope if we move we can stay in touch.

We are hoping that because of Portland's great mass transit system, we can sell one of our cars. All the transit is bike friendly and really safe compared to a lot of cities. So one of our goals is to live in a location convenient to a light rail line that I can take my bike on.

We had such a good time, and were so surprised and overwhelmed by the city that it's taken us a good while to figure out what we thought about the place. It's hard to resist a place thats 90 minutes from the Pacific, and noted for it's liberal government, good food, and tolerance of diverse groups of people. I'm just not going to find good pay in a Red state, and no matter how silly I thought a lot of Portland was, at least they'd respect my right to be just as silly. It also seems like a good place to pick up some extra money DJing and playing a show now and then. They even have a couple venues that lend themselves to electronic musicians, something I had never heard of.

Portland this weekend!

2007-10-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

We'll be visiting Portland, OR this weekend. I am so excited, I haven't been on a plane since I was 17. Being able to afford a trip makes me feel like this awful nightmare of my "college years" is finally almost over!
We don't have a bunch of stuff on list to do, except see as much of the city as we can from the Tri-Met. And take a lot of pictures probably.
The weather is supposed to be 50-60 and rainy- like it's supposed to be everyday in the pacific northwest...
I've used google maps to plot our trips around town, because it interfaces well with the Tri-Met website. I have tagged addresses of a bunch of places that might be interested, and sort of planned a trip around the city by getting tri-met directions. It's a HUGELY handy tool when you are exploring a city you know nothing about- it helped me quickly see the proximity of our hotel to all the stuff we were curious about, thus preventing us from spending all day going from one side of the city to the other just to see a few places because we spent all day riding the tram. Not that I don't look forward to riding the Tram... but not all day.
Their mass transit system looks excellent, we aren't even planning on renting a car.
Hope to meet some friends from em411- Vita at 6-ish on Sunday night. BE THERE!

Disco Godfather

2007-09-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

I've just had one of the most confusing cinematic experiences of my life. It came to me in the form of a netflix recommendations. Typically, I am totally amazed at how wrong netflix judges what films I'll like. Three Men and a Baby?! What kind of guy does netflix think I am?
The same goes for users "similar" to me- I've only found one user who is more than about 40% similar to me.

But the description of this one was just too much to resist:
"Tucker Williams (Rudy Ray Moore) is a former cop who spends his nights spinning vinyl at a disco. When his nephew (Julius J. Carry III) starts using angel dust, Williams pulls out his martial-arts skills and stirs things up. He gets help from Noel (Carol Speed), and together the pair goes after big-time dealer Singer Ray (James H. Hawthorne). Unfortunately, Ray and his men are more dangerous than the drugs they're selling."

If anybody knows this it's my household: there are a lot of really, really bad movies out there with great taglines. And in general, the "Blaxploitation" genre is entirely overrated. Like all B genres, it's plagued with intolerably bad audio, lighting, and especially bad pacing.

This movie's audio is occasionally bad, its got a little filler- lots of overly long intro shots and disco scenes, and LOTS of drawn out "PCP freakout" scenes. But somehow, I loved the film. The lead character's got an almost grandfatherly stiffness about his acting. I came away from this film convinced not only that I really liked the character, but that I would probably really like Rudy Ray Moore in real life.
There are a lot of false-PSA cautionary tale sort of b-films. Most of them are relatively transparent- it becomes obvious their intention is foul after about 10 minutes. But this film made some sort of an honest statement that I can't quite figure out. I came away from the film thinking that Rudy Ray Moore really wanted me to stay away from PCP, to "Attack the Wack" if you will. And just like in most people's lives, his statement about this somehow came out wrong, or a little unnecessarily mixed up. Disco Godfather spends the whole film effectively chasing the "demon" of PCP as she shows up in the hallucinations of those he cares for. In the end, it is only through his forced entrance into the PCP realm of hallucinations that he's able to conquer this demon- and in a hallucinatory scene involving a burst of bad animation he kills the leader of the PCP lab.
You'll leave the film really confused about what the film was really trying to say.
Also interesting is that I'm starting to notice that films called "blaxploitation" were rated much more gently than those designed for both black and white audiences- this one is a wild drug use movie full of foul language and it got rated the same thing as Home Alone. I can only assume that this was racism on behalf of the MPAA in feeling that black audiences were not as sensitive as white audiences.
This is definitely one that needs a little "parental guidance"- unless you want you children to think that the only way to get a friend off of drugs is to take the drug themselves so they can enter the realm and do battle with the spirit of the drug. On second thought, I think even kids can see that that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

End of Summer Mix

2007-09-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Just playing around with some new software I got, and I thought I'd mix and post a bunch of the new music I've been digesting lately.

Another Year,

2007-08-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

Started school this week at MTSU. It's my final semester of university classes before I commit the financial martyrdom that is "student teaching."
This campus is an absolute disaster, and it's gotten markedly worse each semester I attend. Tuition goes up, quality goes down, even the basics are screwed up. Parking becomes more difficult, and I'm starting to see regular road rage outburst behavior in the parking lots. This university is an absolute nightmare- don't go here, if you value your education, or you feel like being treated like a human being.
My schedule is horrible, I have a huge break in the middle of it. That means I'm here all day just for 2 classes.
The big bummer is not having ANY time for music now. I've become conditioned to working in privacy for hours on end, and thats a little difficult to work out with somebody else in the house who is completely annoyed by the sound of my working on music. I'm guessing I now probably have about 4 hrs a week in the early morning or late night to work with headphones on.
This is horrible, I have no idea what I'm going to do to make time alone to work on music. No idea.

Sound that Can Kill or Cure.

2007-07-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

So today I go to my miserable school(MTSU)'s Financial Aid department and find out that I no longer qualify for any financial aid. Great! My reward for making $5K more this year was receiving $5K less in federal education grants. Let me tell you how encouraging that is.
So now I get to finish school with even more debt than I thought I would. So, I've gotta hustle to come up with some extra money to help me with books, tuition, living, etc. this semester. I figured now was as good a time as any to wrap up my record and sell it.
I decided not to get "pro" reproductions done, because literally every single person I know who has done that has been thoroughly burnt by the process and left with 200 copies of their own record under their bed.
So what you'll get is a CDR with a nicely home-printed cover.
14 Tracks, 51:01 long.
I'm selling for $12 shipped to anywhere in the world- right now. If the orders start killing me with shipping to Fiji or something I might have to add something for international buyers.
BUY IT NOW! (click that button to paypal me) Make sure to include your full address(including country) and email in the forms.

Yours Truly, 2095

2007-07-22T11:53:00.001-07:00

This record has always been a favorite, and this song in particular.
I'm still doing a lot of cover material, because I'm still having lots of trouble writing material and no trouble producing...doing covers is just a fun way to keep making music.
deltasleep- Yours Truly, 2095.

Spotnicks!

2007-07-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

I just bumped into a really entertaining swedish surf group called the "Spotnicks." Apparently some portion or another of this group is still going, and as they say, "big in japan."

New Methods of Revenue Generation for the Record Industry.

2007-07-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

When the original Napster lawsuits began happening over filesharing, they seemed like a publicity stunt, or at least they felt sort of temporary. Maybe it was the novelty of it, but it felt like the internet died a little bit when that mentality began to creep into the next 5+ years.
As a child, I grew up with the internet. As such, the internet feels like something we helped create to a lot of people my age. I painstakingly dug through manuals and documentation to assemble, install, and fix the early computers of my house when computers were a much more annoying and complex ordeal. (Younger users can't imagine having to assign their own IRQ or DMA channel to hardware) The internet was a new domain for the transmission of information, it was like an enormous library of information. It helped peel back the layers of whitewashing from the history of popular culture. Popular, commercial culture in America thrives on the relentless fad machine. The possibility of now digging through unseen commercials, out of print records, and media that was later censored and removed from the public eye has helped a very large portion of internet users like myself come to a better understanding of recent history.
So when the potential of the internet gets damaged a little bit like it has by the RIAA, I feel very strong, personal feelings about it. That ever vigilant hand of corporate media, angry at the loss of their king maker status and their new inability to control the fad machine, has been in constant pursuit of the destruction of everything that makes the internet great. The great shift in money making methods for the record industry in this decade has not been from the sales of CDs to the sales of MP3, as it should have been, but in the shift from the sales of anything to the wholesale creation of profit generating lawsuits. And the worst part is, the US Government is on their side!
The real problem seems to be that the codgers in Congress and the Senate have NO idea what they are even fighting for. Observe the following, now legendary quote by Ted Stevens of AK on the topic of Net Neutrality.

The definition should be imminently clear to any literate person who read the net neutrality link above. And yet, it's not clear to the Senate. Because they didn't read up on it.
Because they don't understand why the internet is important.

Also, notice how I had to include only a video with the audio of Ted Steven's brilliant speech? Thats because I couldn't post the actual C-SPAN footage of his speech, as C-SPAN has copyright protected all video of senate and congressional hearings and sent nasty-grams to Youtube to remove these videos.

Copyright law is so unprepared for the internet, and it will be 50 years before we have enough senators or congressmen young enough to do anything about it!

Only just this week SoundExchange, a royalty tracker of (in my opinion) dubious non-profit status, threatened to begin charging royalty payments to internet radio stations. The originally proposed scheme meant the end of internet radio, a friend of mine who DJs at an internet radio station cited his bill at "somewhere near $50,000" or, about 50 times his annual budget.
I once had the unique displeasure of having an ASCAP executive come and speak to my "Math for Liberal Arts" class at MTSU. He completely hijacked the discussion into a discussion about how "wrong" filesharing was. (and it was a badly cliched discussion- even once resorting to the "loaf of bread" talking points) He also discussed the recent creation of a process of listening to audio on radio and calculating royalties- and how the early tests of it showed so many royalties owed that ASCAP and BMI would be out of business if they actually paid them. But when I pushed him further, he admitted that most large volume musicians have to file suit to collect the royalties they were promised.

So, I'll be giving my record away and trying to work out a live show to make a few bucks with. When you play some sort of psychedelic electronic country niche, you should just take your listeners where you can get them.

I Hate What Politicians Have to Say About Education

2007-07-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

My stomach churns as I think about entering a semester as an education major during which a presidential election takes place. The level of ignorance and outright disdain that a lot of politicians and politicos show towards the education system is embarrassing.
All they have is solutions. Every single politicians knows exactly how to fix education. The Republicans want to reward "performance" with higher pay for teachers.

The Democrats want to continue to throw grants and funds at a system they and everyone else know is broken:

It's extremely easy to debate any of these candidates on education. They all ignore the elephant in the room: culture.
It's just not easy to say to a group of voters: your culture is failing your children. Your culture has destroyed the institutions of marriage and family for half of the children in the country. Your culture expects nothing out of children, and rewards them for everything. (every kid on the soccer team is the best kid on the soccer team, and every one of their kicks is wonderful)
There's a reason that immigrant populations from east Asia, south Asia, and Africa do so much better than their native born peers. They're raised in the same neighborhoods as kids who drop out at high rates. They're resisting drugs at a higher rate. Their test scores are notably higher.
They're also typically living in two parent households with parents who have high expectations for their children, and who aren't afraid to check their kids when they screw up.

It's just not a money issue anymore. Yes, there are schools out there that need financial help. Probably all of them. They're run like social security senior citizen's homes. They've got holes in the roofs. Money will fix roofs, but it won't fix attitudes.

I'll throw my idea into the fray as well: Education needs more focus on critical thinking and data evaluation, and less focus on progressively increasing the amounts of junk that gets crammed into standardized tests. Data goes bad, critical thinking does not.
And by more, I mean like an entire class EVERY day for at least an hour.
No skill will benefit children more in an era where anyone can edit the encyclopedia.

Casio Love

2007-07-03T11:31:00.001-07:00

I just got a Casio MT-600 and I am in LOVE with the thing. Luckily, it fit the adapter I had lying around from a mostly unused, enormous, Casio CT-640.
It has the same sort of sound as the lower range in the MT series, but it has an ANALOG FILTER! The DCO tones occupy a great sounding transitional space between the MT series of super simple organi-ish tones and the all PCM sample based tones of the CT series that succeeded it.
That means instant classic when combined with an inability to stay in tune, pitchbend, and a really low sample rate, noisy output.
Witness the awesome: MP3
Everything in that mp3 but the drums is completely unmodified MT-600! To get some of the chorus effects I multitracked the same parts with the fine tune knob cranked.
It's not too hot with bass- it doesn't go too low.
I plan to do a mod I found on the interweb that boost the cutoff and resonance limits and brings a control for each out on the front panel. I'm skiddish though, because these are hard to find, and I really like it the way it is. But all these sounds beg for some kind of hands on control.
$2 from a trailer park yardsale.

Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys+ Found Photos

2007-06-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

deltasleep- Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Also, here are some 8x10's I recently picked up at a thrift store. I haven't modified them in anyway- except my crappy scanner. There's nothing I love more than finding this kind of stuff! They're like sparse poetry or something- they make you generate most of the real interest. Who are these people?
"Invisible Bike" works on the same angle. (not my image, by the way.)

Almond Butter and New Age OCD Parasite Paranoia

2007-06-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

I am so boring sometimes. There's a discount food store not far away from me that I'd really started enjoying going to(House of Bargains in Lebanon, TN). We've become spoiled at my house- getting things like Tahini, San Pellegrino, Cashew Butter, Porcini Oil, and high quality pasta sauces for 50 cents a piece.
I often just buy something because it sounds good- whether I'm sure what it is or not. When I get home, I google the product to find some recipes with the ingredient in it.
Today, this incidentally bumped me into a hilarious review of Almond Butter(which incidentally, also clued me in to just how expensive this item really is! )

[click the pictures to enlarge]

Apparently, this paranoia that "non-organic" food contains parasites is widespread. My wife is typically more familiar with these sorts of things, and didn't see this as surprising at all! She claims to have worked with and known several individuals and families who believe this to be true.
Playing on parasite anxiety is certainly far from new- any older American will tell you about the bevy of disgusting de-worming tonics and medicines they were subjected to. Here's the cover of a pamphlet from 1938. It's remarkably similar in tone to much of the material given to those susceptible to "holistic" quackery. The pamphlet was free, presented as science, and entirely an advertisement for products made by this company (Dr. D. Jayne and Son, Inc. whose headquarters in Philly was reputed to have been one of the most flamboyant in the city at its time)

People were umpteen times more likely to have a parasite during this era- and I'll bet it wasn't because of the high tech fertilizer and pesticides used on their crops- or the genetic modifications made to the foods.
The fact is, food paranoia appeals to some deep-seated survival instinct in people. Behaviors related to food safety are base instincts found the same in lower mammals. Taste Aversion being a good example of this: even when you know that you are sick, throwing up a food that you know is completely safe can make you not want to eat that good again for months- or for those who eat until they vomit, never. For most of us, it takes months for the logical part of us to overcome that survival behavior of avoiding Witness the response you are certain to have to this video, which alleges that pork is full of worms:

You know it's probably not true- but it's scary. I am thoroughly convinced that there is no notion, no lie, no belief more attractive than those that fall along the lines of "everything you know is wrong." And by the way, this video is entirely bogus. Calm down.
But so called "organic foods"(organic in scientific terms just means any compound containing carbon) are not subjected to the very measures that hundreds of years of commercial agriculture have developed as a means of making foods safer and easier to cultivate. Ignoring many of these procedures and practices might make your food taste better- repelling pestilence can actually make produce more nutritious. But I think its a long, long shot to say that NOT using pesticides makes food less likely to have pests in it.
Thats just dumb.

Luckily, there's now(finally?) a USDA Organic certification. I cannot imagine the complexity of developing or enforcing such a body of rules. Really, you can just view these as better quality products. If they taste better, eat them. We're lucky enough in the Western World to have people who get paid to check out our food. People who have spent a decade in school studying chemistry so complex it's beyond your wildest New Age fantasies.
I am beginning to really hate the holistic health and new age movements for their preying upon people who are uneducated or mentally ill- but that seems to be the norm for medical quackery in America. Many mental illnesses come with phobias of being poisoned, or of food contamination. Perhaps it's this tendency thats got the moonmaidens of the world pouring peroxides in their peanut butter, and coke on their pork.

Great Streetview Link

2007-05-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

"He has no head."

Tell me this is not real!

2007-05-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

I have just had my mind blown by the latest addition to google maps. It now features STREET LEVEL three dimension viewing! Think of the amazing amount of energy that went into collecting this data! I can only imagine that the task involved a lot of driving around with a GPS unit and a panoramic camera of some sort. Anyways, it's amazing. Look around Times Square or Las Vegas- lots of places are now available. Its terrifying and amazing.
Also, Las Vegas is a nasty dump of a town.
Here's a car in a driveway in Oakland- you can read the license plates!
WOW

Depeche Mode (with Vince Clarke) - New Life

2007-05-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Carpenters: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

2007-05-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

I Believe in Music

2007-05-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I did this cover in response to a recent discussion with some friends, during which we accidentally doomed music. I still believe in music, even if theres never a dime in it again. This is a cover of a hopelessly hippie song.
I Believe in Music

First Attempts at Video Editting

2007-05-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Wow.

2007-04-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Great Jaco Pastorius Video set on Youtube

2007-04-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

This collection of 10 videos is exactly why I think youtube is ten times the public service that public television or really public libraries are! Also, he reminds me of Mike Meyers so much...
Apparently this was dubbed from a 1985 VHS tape, two years before Pastorius's death.

PS: I'm Gothic

2007-03-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Found in a WebMD magazine in a doctor's office several months ago. This has been on my refrigerator since then, and my wife and I still laugh about it.

WORST WEBSITE OF ALL TIME

2007-03-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do this kind of thing, but my wife was looking at stupid cat websites when she called me downstairs laughing about how bad this site was. Take a look around, if you can figure it out, or you can stand it. It's the most geocities thing I have ever seen.
http://www.geocities.com/prydelande2002/

Six Days on the Road

2007-03-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

Heres a cover I did today of a classic country song. I was going for that blurry and sore feeling you get when you've been on the road too long. I've been working on my chicken shack guitar licks, trying to go for maximum cheese in terms of tone and playing. Watching 60's biker movies will do this to you. The guitar is run through guitar rig 2, the bass is just run direct to my mixer through a DI.
And yes, I know the ending was distasteful, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Six Days on the Road

Vista and Pro Audio

2007-02-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

I cringe every time a new Microsoft OS comes out, and I shy away for the first year as a matter of course. But Vista seems like it may be a little less buggy than say, the dreaded Windows ME. In a nutshell, heres what I've found out about whats different for multi-track, low-latency DAWs in Vista. Remember, I'm no expert.

1. Your GPU is now assigned more tasks than previously. This means that you'll be losing less CPU cycles to the flashy graphics and animations that come embedded in most DAWs, like meters, clocks, automation animations, and your GUI in general. What I hope this means is that Windows Vista will also use your GPU to run all the eye candy that comes with the OS. I always hated super-flashy OSes, like OSX and Vista, because I thought I was probably using too much of my CPU on the graphics that were there to sell the OS to general purpose users. Supposedly, Vista scales to the hardware it's installed on, meaning that slower PCs or PCs with weaker GPUs will have less animation in the OS. Personally, I could deal just fine with NO animation in my OS.

2. Finding things: easier. I probably don't have to tell you this, because its been one of the most touted features of Vista. The new native search function in Vista claims to be almost instantaneous, providing results with each keystroke, a lot like the search in the latest firefox does. The idea is, this will help people move away from the file-folder sort of logic thats dominated computing for 20 years. As hard drives get bigger and cheaper, this makes good sense, but I'll still be using plenty of folders in my audio apps at the very least.

3. Driver Hell: I don't have to tell you this either. Since computers are currently standing on the fence between 32-bit and 64-bit OSes, you'll have that many more drivers to accidentally try and install. The 32-bit driver, and the 64-bit driver(signed and unsigned). Here's what the manufacturer of my audio card has to say about the issue:

M-Audio has been keeping pace with changes to the Windows Operating System since the release of Windows 95 nearly 12 years ago. We are very excited about the opportunity to offer continued support to our Windows customers as the Windows Pro Audio community begins the gradual transition to the Vista era. Over the past year, we have worked directly with Microsoft’s Vista team to prepare for this release.

Currently, M-Audio does not offer Vista drivers or Vista software updates (beta or otherwise). As soon as Vista drivers or updates for any product are available, this FAQ and other portions of our Web site will be immediately updated to reflect this. Due to the nature of software and driver development, we are not able to provide exact dates or timeframes for when specific drivers will become available—but please rest assured that supporting Vista is a top priority for us.

Gee thanks, guys. I feel like I can really "rest assured" now. Other manufacturers have been a lot better, so I'm sure this is probably not going to be a big deal. But its going to be a hassle for the first year, like it is with every major OS change.
From what I can glean from microsoft's site, just switching to Vista is not going to improve or diminish your audio performance. But if your soundcard manufacturer does choose to release drivers that take advantage of the new Vista audio architecture, you could experience better performance.

4. You're going to approve a lot of things. UAC(User Account Control) is the default mode in Vista.

With User Account Control in the new Windows Vista operating system, you can reduce the risk of exposure by limiting administrator-level access to authorized processes.

Right! And I can click allow for about a million separate applications. I get the feeling that this is going to become a lot like firewalls are to your average user: this annoying box that just keeps popping up asking you to approve things until you just become so frustrated that you click them all the instant they come up. Whether or not these things will pop up and hang audio applications remains to be seen.

Is anybody out there using Vista for pro-audio and willing to comment on how its going?

Biotech Youtube Collection

2007-02-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a few interesting Biotech related videos, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. This first one has the added bonus of having the Forbidden Planet soundtrack.

More creepy monkeys with robot arms. Note the caption in this one: "Reenactment"

The fact that heavy metal has begun to address biotech related issues is a sign of its coming relevance to everyday life.

Naturally, people who oppose the science tend to be morons and ideologues- like the morons who oppose nanotech, nuclear power, and other related spooky sciences that your average joe cannot understand. How can you tell someone who's starving or making a living on their crops that they should use crops with lower yields?

Enjoy the vitriolic comments from people arguing for the rights of cockroaches to be free and unfettered by robotics experiments.

Those roaches are enormous.

Also, heres a totally overhyped presentation of interesting video of the Braingate NI. Once again, the comments section has anxiety about robot overlords transmitting Fox News directly to your brain. Also, bionic men.

Of course, theres no shortage of people who are willing to call all of biotech the coming of an "apocalypse" or of the "end times." But tell that to the paraplegic and the starving. I love a wacko as much as the next guy, probably more, but anti-scientific thought is so potentially popular that its extremely toxic to our society.

I Am Not Dead.

2007-02-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

For the three of you out there who may still pay attention, I have not died. I am in the middle of a busy semester of my senior year at MTSU. I really, really do not enjoy my classes, and they are sucking up all my time with stupid, silly, pointless busy work. My wife has been out of work for about 3 weeks, which means I have had no time to myself for music in almost a month now. I'm not dead, but I might be going crazy.
I can't work on music with somebody over my shoulder, or even in the house. Not that I've been a fountain of good ideas or anything- I don't think I've been able to come up with anything decent in 6 months. Its a depressing creative drought, but I've been getting a lot better at technical skills. I've been building a large sample library and listening to a ton of music.
I've almost got another mix ready, this time on a very specific theme: space race related records. A lot of crazy children's records and general cold war anxiety. Should be really fun. Going to the moon was such a big deal, and there were so many records about it.
Anyways, I just wanted to tell you all to hang in there.

45s I Have Loved

2006-11-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

Since I had the day off today from school I made it my mission to record some of the 45s I've been ignoring for so long. There has been a little kid screaming bloody murder outside today every time anything bothers him, so I needed something to drown out the noise.
Speaking of annoyances, I registered this week for my next-to-last classroom semester. After that, its on to student teaching, and then on to trying to find a school system that will pay off my loans. Strangely enough, metro Nashville will, but metro NYC will not.
So in celebration of my seeing the ending the misery that is "undergrad," heres a few 45s I dug out. I love the sound of a 45, so crunchy and scratchy, over compressed, the fact that its only a song long. Theres some psychedelic crap in here - some of its horrible, some of its entertaining. There are a few spoken word bits, from a depressing insurance sales box set of 45-sized records, a kids science fiction advertising soundsheet. Also a little bit of surf- and let me tell you, having surf and psychedelic stuff on a 45 makes a man feel wealthy- the stuff is getting high prices if Nashville's record shops are any indicator. Mostly the only thing these songs have in common is their relative unpopularity. or sometimes, their stupidity.
I have a handful of 45s of awful country like the piece here that I bought from an entrepreneur at his garage sale outside of Nashville- apparently he used to record and press 45s for individuals who were going to sell them at shows, etc. Whats weird though, is that some of them are from the 1990s- and I have no idea what good a 45 would be then.
Anyway, enjoy another collection of gems scraped out of our culture's audio dumpster.
45s I Have Loved

Thriller

2006-11-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Every once and awhile I go through an agonizing drought where any attempt to make music just ends in a lot of banging my head against the wall. I try to keep a positive attitude about these phases, and just consider them developmental...and I don't think that's unrealistic at all. In reality these phases are just a continuing series of crises- what I want to make versus what I am able, what I can arrange versus what I can imagine, what I can conceptualize versus what I can make concrete, etc.
During these phases I learn a lot of new tricks by dissecting songs I really like, and with each of these phases I try and tackle songs of increasing difficulty and arrange/dissect them. Some songs are so simple that I just have to find out what it was about the production that makes them work so well. This time, Thriller is that song. It's definitely some combination of how cool LinnDrum bongos sound, and that synth bassline. I spend a lot of my listening time in headphones while my wife is asleep. I know a mix is really onto something when I take the headphones out of anxiety that perhaps I've not turned the speakers off and I've been playing Thriller at deafening volume on repeat at 5:45. That wolf-howl sound does that to me every single time. Everything about the mix is layered, compressed, and punched just right. If you take the mix apart by left and right channel you'll be surprised to find that the backing is surprisingly noodly. The only things the stereo image has in the center are the portions that are rock solid in terms of timing, and its careful to only allow one element that stage at a time. Otherwise, the mix stays busy on the outside edges. Somehow this comes out to the absolute perfect balance of funk and precision. This mix is probably only surpassed in my mind by Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. It's a real bummer that the 1979 state of the art sounds so much better than the 2006 state of the art. And don't get me started on how well the drums are recorded. I can't wait to start making a living so I can build a completely vintage hi-fi setup. The deafeningly loud 4 foot tall speakers kind that distorts when you slam it. My uncle had a pioneer rig like this in his garage when I was a kid, and I don't think I've ever heard anything sound better. When I get this, I am listening to every disco record I own.
I've also been working out an arrangement of Love's The Daily Planet by ear and recording bits and pieces of it. Some songs you just hear and you know how to play- (thinking about the Kinks here) and some songs really don't . When I started dissecting this record I immediately realized that its about ten times as simple as I thought it was, and really only relies on the use of simple fingerings and chords in really awkward combinations. I now understand a lot more about what makes this record feel so original 40 years after it was made- its got a really unique approach to guitar, and a lot of the guitar work seems to be built around the limitations of a self-taught(or at least idiosyncratic) guitarist. I had also never thought about listening for the notes that shouldn't be in a chord to inadvertently sound as a technique for trying to sort about what fingering is being used. Dissection of the record has been one epiphany after another...I never knew that the use of a major chord in the right place could sound so... exotic.
Oh yeah and then theres this annoying school in my life getting in the way of listening to records and playing guitar. Teaching a literature group to some fifth graders, its fun and I enjoy it, but I'm trying my hardest to get as good at music as possible...hoping somehow that I can pan it out into something. How does anybody make a living in that industry any more? Even Tower records is dead. Major labels are like a super-morbidly obese patient falling out of bed and screaming furiously at a nurse to pick them up. All I know is that I want to leave some good records behind me, and the way I do anything else begins with a lot of reading, writing, and listening.
I don't know where my next record is going, I don't know when I'll get my head out of this phase, but I've got that feeling I always have about music, that I'm about to do something I'm really going to love.

Genuinely Scary Halloween Compilation

2006-09-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

deltasleep's Totally Vapid Halloween Collection
Running time: 35:27 VBR mp3, 34.16 MB
Here's a recording of a lot of things from my record collection that I find to be somewhere between creepy, brilliant, and unlikely. I focused this time on what I refer to as "light psychadelia" -records that feature strange instruments or effects in an otherwise mundane song, and that little bit is just enough to make it all feel strange. The closest this gets to stereotypes you probably hold about psychadelia(and that term is almost entirely meaningless) is the mystic moods orchestra.
You can hear the beginnings of bands like AIR, Bertrand Burgalat, and every other recent imitation thereof. Hopefully these songs will give you as much inspiration and energy as they gave me.
These are genuinely creepy records because they push things like delays and phasers in environments you don't expect to find them. They are used sparingly, and the results almost always catch the listener off guard. To top it off, they are used on a quality of recording thats completely unmatched today. The more I listen to records engineered and produced by people like Enoch Light, Arif Mardin, and Hugo Montenegro, the more I am blown away.
A lot of these songs will require your patience for a moment, but think of it as a crescendo, or a tension building device. Wait for the weird synth passage, trust me. Some of them I admit, are just so effervescent that its creepy- like the ultra rarity among rarities that sounds just like the Free Design singing "Kites are Fun" except its actually Tony Mottola's Warm Wild and Wonderful instrumental version of the song.
Featured on this record in some sort of order are the LPs: Muzak: Stimulus Progression, Mystic Moods Orchestra: Love Token, Switched on Bacharach, Les Baxter: Hell's Belles, Out of This World with the Richard Marino Orchestra, Enoch Light: Charge!, Honky Tonk and Percussion(also known as Will Someone Please Bring a Tuner to the Next Session) Hugo Montenegro: Lover's Collection, Tony Mottola: Warm, Wild, and Wonderful, Enoch Light: Spaced Out.
Luxuriamusic.com says that they have no DJ slots open, I was really bummed. That would be a great way to get my mixes like these streamed. I'll show them, though. I am hoping to do this at least monthly, hopefully way more often.
Enjoy this genuinely haunting and beautiful collection of songs that might have died if I hadn't saved them from the thrift store. One of them, "Enoch Light: Charge" is a bit tattered in one corner because a .40 cal round flew through the thrift store front window and through the glassware, through the record bin, and into a computer monitor in the back room. If that bullet had even so much as a slight change in trajectory, you would not be enjoying the first song on this mix.
Was that inches away from this record being lost forever? It's possible.

the REAL deltasleep.net

2006-08-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to those of you who may only pay attention to my RSS feed that I have officially launched a real webpage on deltasleep.net Its still a work in progress, but the progress left is just fine tuning the size of the graphics to work with a wider variety of screen resolutions, and typing up a more in depth bio since that seems to be a popular request from a few college stations that have expressed interest.
The CD should be done within a month, pending the availability of some student loans. I hate student loans, but I think I can make my money back selling the record, so it won't be quite so painful paying that portion back as it will the other portions. I'll also be investing in some stickers to spam my campus with.

More Music!

2006-08-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Heres another set of strange, rare, and out of print music in mp3.
Latin mix
Here's stuff to read while you listen to it:

This time focusing on music of latin origin and/or treatment. The moog record gems in here are both from a Command Records two-fer "Electronic Ececlections with Richard Hayward and Walter Sear." The record is easily my favorite moog record of all time(its nuts and hayward's drumming makes it work), and if pressured, I might divulge the entire thing since I can't even find so much as a line on the internet about the record. Esquivel makes an appearance as well, in a rare recording of "Malageuna" from the 1968 "Genius of Esquivel" that gives me chills every time. Recording quality on this particular Esquivel disc is not as noteworthy as his earlier recordings, but that spark is still there. Esquivel sounds a lot more subdued and seems to enjoy contrasting a small group with electric piano against his characteristically bombastic brass. The results are a more mature, less silly Esquivel who gives things time to play out a bit, enjoying the seduction of the listen with a soft piano passage, and then tossing the drama about on the piano. You'll have to pardon the click on Besame Mucho recording, it gives it character. Esquivel's arranging is truly some of the most brilliantly playful ever recorded, and "Genius of Esquivel" shows about as close to a dark side as Esquivel had.
Pete Terrace, "King of the Boogaloo" makes a characteristically cheesy apperance. If Mongo Santamaria and Pete Terrace got in a latin stereotype contest, who would win? I'm gonna have to say Pete Terrace, because anybody who puts obviously looped crowd noise in their record and calls it live should lose whatever contest they are in.
Howard Roberts also comes into play with a brilliantly talented and slightly cheesey arrangement of "O Barquinho." "Instrumentally speaking, he's got the newest, freshest, most exciting bossa nova sounds to swing with todays tunes since guitars hit the big time. He's wild, he's funky, he's got everybody out there listening...he's that appealing! Whats more, H. R. told this reporter, 'I'm Sincere.'" Man, jazz lost it all when it started taking itself too seriously. Go out and get yourself a copy of "Howard Roberts Guilty" and see what I mean.
Process 35 Percussion rounds out the set with the stupidly titled "Mambo Ravioli." Somehow, everything on "SPINORAMA" records comes across stupid one way or the other. At least this is a great song, fun arrangement, and a great recording with a stupid title. Typically, they get that backwards. This one feels like being chased by a marching band that is in love with you through a department store in 1965. As a bonus I threw in the track immediately following it on the record, so you could hear just how genuinely stupid this record really is. When you look at music from this era, you have to look past a lot of goofy marketting and you'll find a staggering level of musicianship.
Oh and I'd also like to add what a pleasure it is for me to hear these recordings in stereo for the first time thanks to my wonderful Torx implant!
Enjoy!

Chelsea Place Apartments of Murfreesboro

2006-08-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Everybody I know has apartment horror stories, so I guess mine is just one more on the pile. Let me just start out by saying: Do not ever, EVER, involve yourself with these people. Here's how my horror story goes:
Things were fine when I moved in, the complex was owned by AIMCO, the largest apartment owner in the US. I moved out of my first apartment and into a much larger one, and recieved my security deposit back at 100% with no hassles. Then at 3AM on the day after Christmas, I awoke in a panic, and looked out my window at an enormous, glowing, billowing cloud of smoke coming from the top of my building. I drag my wife out of bed, get enough clothes on to get out the door, and nearly run into a fireman who was about to axe my door in.
We set outside for a few hours while we watched the building burn out the top story while we froze. Then we were able to go back into our smoky apartments and attempt to sleep before work the next morning.
Almost immediately after the cause of the fire, I began pressing the apartment owners(which were now a newer, smaller group) to tell me what the cause of the fire was. After about a month of my hassling them, they told me that their heating unit had caused it. They couldn't tell me anything they had done to prevent another fire- no inspection, no repairs, nothing. I immediately requested release from my lease so I could move somewhere where I wasn't nervous all the time. They took 2 months to answer that request with a letter simply stating "denied." This was obnoxious, but it wasn't too unexpected for the kind of heartless car sales rejects that usually end up running apartment complexes.
The real trouble happened when I moved out. I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom, all appliances, etc. And never heard from them about my security deposit. Then suddenly I started to get obnoxious phone calls from a collections agent attempting to collect $138 for Chelsea Place!
Aparently, they billed me for $137 in addition to my security deposit, for "cleaning." After I got a lawyer and talked it out, the only real option was to pay it. I am hoping I can follow up this blog with a string of "letters to the editor", and make sure that nobody I care about ever deals with them.
But yeah, theres the venting blog that was bound to happen. I hope it gets number one in the search engines so people find out ASAP.

This is so hot.

2006-07-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

I mean everything about this. The wardrobe, the choreography, the set design, the way the drums are recorded, the batman camera angles at the end...it all adds up to probably the greatest musical ever.

Back from Vacation

2006-07-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm back after a week on St. George Island, Florida. Its a great, uncrowded, affordable vacation if you are interested in the beach, wildlife, and fresh seafood. Its really unlike a lot of people's florida vacations, because the town is still a real community.

While I was there I saw "Pirates of the Carribean" (WE HAD KIDS ALONG OK I AM HIPPER THAN THAT) in a single screen movie theater with a behringer stereo PA and plastic chairs on a concrete slab in a historical theater (that happens to be the only theater for miles and miles.)

Most interesting in every trip to the beach is the drive through Alabama. It was on a drive on interstate 231 just past montgomery Alabama that I learned what America really is, and I got the idea for deltasleep as it exists now. Its that dusty color of the roads, that unbelievable level of decay that you see in Alabama that inspired the degenerate Americana approach to music I now have. The empty billboards, the empty strip malls, the rest stops with no running water, the gas stations with signs that say "BOILED PNUTS WE TAKE FOODSTAMPS." The cypress swamps, the litter everywhere. And the unbelievable number of them that show serious literacy issues... Its like Alabama is the worst post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie ever. Except Alabama is real. So are Mississippi and Louisiana.
The places are so full of sad faced people, all I see are looks of dread everywhere I go. And the trailers! Church trailers, water department trailers, strip club trailers, hotel trailers, trailers welded together, trailers under carport roofs, city hall trailers, and mostly crappy slum trailers with 4 cars, at least 3 grills, and bud light bottles everywhere. And not a lawnmower in sight. It's just really amazing to me that such a large portion of the country is so damned ugly and unkept. I would have a ton of pictures of it, but I had to drive and my wife can't figure out why anybody would want to see the stuff I usually take pictures of. Of course, thats exactly WHY I want to take pictures of it.
Here's your rescued obscure audio for the moment. This is a portion of a demo cassette produced at a friend of the family's small demo studio on the north side of nashville. This guy goes by Hank Conway. The tape is labelled "Hank's Still Alive." I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and I think it only reiterates all the points I'm trying to make with this entry.
Hank Conway- Hank's Still Alive

now presenting www.deltasleep.net

2006-07-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a design team nearly up and running- yes thats right a design team. The internet is a great thing...I ask around for some help online, and I can't afford to pay anybody, I was just hoping that they could use it in their portfolio as a low hassle way to boost it. So yeah now I have 7-8 graphic designers in my email who want to do it. Also, yesterday I purchased the domain "www.deltasleep.net" because I needed something for the CD and possibly for a run of cheap stickers. For now(until I get a proper website/hosting up) the domain is simply linked to this site. Things are coming together, but getting a half decent promotional machine up and running is way way more work than I thought it would be.

I took the ipod back.

2006-06-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

My wife got a small bonus at work and she decided to spend it at the Apple store near where she works. She bought an ipod nano, 1GB. I can't tell you how excited she was, and we set down after work and plugged the thing up, and were instantly disappointed. We had to install drivers for an mp3 player, silly enough on its own, and we had to reboot twice to do that. Then we get it all together only to find out that it doesn't work with windows the way that regular mp3 players do, it only interfaces with itunes. iTunes is quite probably the single most frustrating piece of bloatware I have ever used- it uses 60MB of RAM to play mp3s, and it insists on grouping all my mp3s by "genre" instead by the FOLDERS THEY ARE ALREADY IN. So I set up the ipod to just drag and drop files like a normal mp3 player. It would not recognize them as songs. So: she had an "mp3 player", designed to play mp3s, and it would not recognize that the mp3s on it were meant to be "played"- they were just data until itunes magically tells the ipod that they are "songs."
Victoria and I agreed that we can't stand to spend money on products that limit how we can use them after we buy them- that's the same reason we refuse to spend excessive amounts on cell phones: they're chained to one company, and leave you slave to only option. itunes had way to much control of my music collection- it made my 11gb of mp3s into 22gb by copying EVERY SINGLE MP3 on my computer! Because I never know when I'll need a second copy. Unless I "purchase" the file on itunes, then of course I CAN'T copy it.
So I took it back to the store, where the customer service took 20 minutes to get around to me, and then had the audacity to tell me that they "normally do not accept returns, but would make an exception" and were so good as to accept my not 24hr old ipod with a $15 return fee, thereby guaranteeing that I never buy another product from them. They asked me why I wanted to return it and I told them i really didn't like itunes, and was unable to get it to work with about 3 hours of work and looking over the support documentation(it kept trying to convert all my wma's to aac after i told it not to, and refused to let me just drag and drop files, only "synchronize" my whole music collection to the ipod) and they just said "yes, itunes compresses all the files." And I said "my files are already compressed, and i don't want software that does anything without my telling it to." Reception was totally cold, and I was severely dissappointed with the attitude of the staff(this is the Green Hills Mall Apple/Mac Store in Nashville, TN- a mall notorious for obnoxious staff who won't help anyone who looks like they don't have unlimited money anyways) and most of all, dissappointed at the unneccessary restriction of the unit itself.
I'll be going to newegg.com today and buying a unit with double the capacity for half the price from someone like samsung or sandisk that has been good to me in the past, and I don't think I'll regret it.

a quick DJ set

2006-05-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Heres a quick set of songs mixed together that are all without exception junk I dug out of thrift stores that ended up being a huge influence on me. The focus of this particular set is electrofunk/disco/classic hip hop and it runs the gamut from less popular electro to generic pop disco cannon fodder. Some of it was too goofy to leave out, some of it was too good. Most of it is treading that line right inbetween the two.Because the releases span about a 20 year period of musical history(from 1977 to 1984) its pretty hard to effectively master or mix these tracks. Earlier recordings lack the bass to the ones from the 1980s, but they respond really well to a multiband compressor with a little bass emphasis. Each track was handled individually to ensure that I thoroughly slammed it for your house party this summer. I used soundforge and a turntable to record, then PSPVintagewarmer to massage the audio.
If you ever want tips on remastering from vinyl, let me know, its become sort of an obsession for me.
In a lot of the hip hop stuff you'll notice that sampling ethics hadn't really been sorted out, and the records were never popular enough to come onto radar and get sued. Its a pleasure to hear such obvious party music, made with zero anxiety about how much of something gets sampled.

disco-electrofunk megamix!

my next project will be the much requested bhangra megamix I've been working on, but i'm having a hard time finding my bhangra stuff from an old hard drive. oh yes, and I am back to box.net for this one, so that you can stream this direct instead of expecting you to download it. also, YET ANOTHER file storage service has folded, fileupyours.com yields a 404 now.

More on "The Sounds and Music of the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer"

2006-05-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Since my posting on the RCA Mark II has drawn so much public interest(I can only guess I got picked up by a more popular blog, and one of the editors of Keyboards magazine germany contacted me from a googling) I've decided to take some pictures of the record and do what little research on it that I can. Here are some images in a Flickr set of details from the jacket of the record. The record jacket is essentially the same thing that the announcer said-almost exactly in most parts. But the graphics are too cool to pass up showing off.
link the Flickr set: here
I did a little bit of digging for information on Harry Olson, the director of the project. Turns out he's also the man behind the ill-fated RCA Picture disc format, which you may have seen put in record bins by confused thrift store workers. He's also the man pictured pointing and directing the guy in the jumpsuit(i love that) to "turn that black knob, no not that one, the other identical black knob in a bank of 30 unlabelled knobs!" Heres some quick info on Harry Olson
Also, turns out that the great sounding narratOR on the record is just John Preston, one of the engineers! Man people used to sound so much cooler.
You'll also notice that all the frequencies are listed in cycles per second(CPS) instead of hertz. Hertz as a unit of measurement had not yet become standard- this record was made 5 years before that fact, if that gives you any idea of how old this record really is. Its also interesting to note in the routing diagram that the synth actually used octavers like an organ, which highlights the interesting and little discussed topic(I have no friends) of just what is an organ and what is a synthesizer? A lot of organs have had pitch bends, effects built in, and "solo sections" which were essentially monosynths of sorts.
I've also went ahead and uploaded the entire record to a new server. Every new solution presents some new hassles, but bear with me and I'll sort it out. I have zipped and uploaded the record to here. It's about 50MB so if you don't have broadband...sorry(for so many reasons).
Got big plans for the blog this week, school let out and I've got a lot of time while I sit around and wait for returned calls from my waste of time completely worthless university, Middle Tennessee State University. Trust me, don't go there. I'll be doing a write up on a couple more stupid records, including some modular synth porn(and I mean that in a VERY literal sense, not in the silly internet misuse of the word). I'm also contemplating releasing a record of my own stuff that is almost complete.

Couple of Songs for your Friday

2006-05-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

The way I see records like this happening is as follows:
kid: Dad, I really need a hot disco record by somebody like Peter Brown
dad: if you're good i'll get you one on the way home from work this friday.

Dad goes to the store, and finds that he can get this GREAT compilation of a bajillion disco hits for $3.99 and jumps on it. Then he gives it to the kid who immediately finds out that its not the original artists, its some pretty average 4 piece cover band with an upright piano.
So, without further ado, I present to you, a Friday double feature from Disco Dancin' Fever from Pickwick records-notorious maker of children's story and haunted house records.
Dance with Me, and Risky Changes.

If there was really such a thing as "disco standards" then this record covers them. I really like records like this, because since most of them were made right as disco was waining a little bit(1978) they illustrate the disco-house transition in a way that we seldom see done. Listen to that little bit of compression on Risky Changes as it cuts through the cheesy piano lines-thats house in the making. Records like these are a much more effective tool at looking at music history than the ones by the artists themselves because they've cut all the artistic quality out of the record and made it entirely as generic as possible. So I guess if you wanted the most generic possible distillation of what dance music looked like in 78, this would be a better place to look than an "original" band who is going to fill their record with "personality" - although I really can't give disco too much credit for that.

If you want more of this record, let me know and i'll record some more. I just bought a phono preamp and I am ready to go!

(you'll still need a box.net account but its quick and easy)

Recordings of My Supposed Great Uncle

2006-04-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

While digging through my desk I bumped into a tape I'd been looking for for ages. This tape was recorded in Blackey, KY (there's a Wiki) in 1979 and features my great uncle, Clyde Caudill. By far my favorite of the songs is "Hitler Called the Devil on the Telephone." All titles are mine, by the way. The tape represents an interesting bit of ephemera, and features two songs written about Blackey itself, one telling the story of how Blackey got burnt down by fire, unincorporated and then reincorporated when someone discovered that the corporation records were stored in Frankfurt Kentucky. Tragically, when Clyde finally gets talking(in true hillbilly fashion it's a depressing speech) in the file I named Epilogue, the tape ends in mid sentence. On the other side someone has recorded a Hank Williams record by setting the tape player up to a speaker. I don't really know if anything was dubbed over on the other side or not. You'll notice in one of the songs you can hear a clock chiming in the background, and its 3 o'clock. Also note you'll have to create a login and pass at box.net, but its quick and easy, doesn't even require an email.
Here they are, in no order:
Hitler Called the Devil on the Telephone
He Was in Heaven
A City Called Heaven
A Rose that Will Never Fade
I Woke Up this Morning
Jesus Walked On this Earth
Untitled Gospel
The Story of Blackey
Mabel
Epilogue
Also, I've had to scrap hosting at Orbitfiles.net after they inexplicably locked my account and will not respond to my emails. I am using box.net with these files, let me know if you have any problem.

A Quick Extra While I'm recording anyways.

2006-04-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this music to clean house to:
Xavier Cugat- Twist with Cugat- Chattanooga Choo Choo.

A Very Special Treat

2006-04-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

I know I've neglected the blog lately but I promise that this will make up for it.

Since I've just found out about Orbitfiles.com, which will allow me 1GB of free public or private file storage, I've realized I now have a unique chance and obligation to share with the world some of the strange and rare records I have in my collection. I can't go out and share the ones that are still in print, or popular enough to be on RIAA radar, but some of these would drop off the face of the earth when I died and no one would ever hear them again. At least thats my fear at least. There are a lot of great sites with people more dedicated than I to preserving our musical landscape in a throw-away world. Heres a great guide to the LP Sharity movement:
http://www.oddiooverplay.com/ears/living.html
Digging through records like these is the kind of thing that makes a musician think about leaving something permanent behind, a legacy of some sort. I met KRS-One and Busy Bee the other day, and they had a lot to say about this. "You are already someone's ancestor." There was a really good discussion on being real and how lost they both feel that rap has gotten. Rap used to be a haven for the weird and the idea was to be as unexpected and unique as possible. My favorite quote was "The real you might have to get married." It got me thinking a lot about the internet. Its like the buffer that lets people have permission to be themselves without fear of ridicule. Like this blog- or my music, completely without any audience in mind. The whole "think about your audience" mentality has really killed a lot of good music and books. When I just write something direct and honest like this I think it ends up really connecting to somebody- even if its just one person that means a lot more than half connecting to a million.

So I'll start with a real gem. The RCA Mark II Demonstration. Believe it or not, I found this LP at a christian community outreach thrift store in Hendersonville TN. I consider this to be probably the most interesting, valuable, and important record I own. Apparently under a lot of pressure from RCA and Princeton, Milton Babbit and the Princeton crew in charge of this basement filling beast produced a record to be released on RCA red label vinyl.
Heres the Wiki on the Mark II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Mark_II_Synthesizer
Now heres the condition of you DLing this: if I catch you putting these vocal clips in your music I KNOW where they came from, so you had better do them justice.
*The Mark II Plays, of all things, a Hillbilly Band Medley:
*The Mark II Plays Irving Berlin's Blue Skies:
*All of Side One, which consists of an RCA narrator bombastically describing the future of music, the nature of synthesis, the nature of notes and frequency, arrangements, the whole bag. Also an example of one of the first attempts at speech synthesis(other than A.G. Bell's attempts which only resulted in foam heads that screamed like babies, but thats another story.)
Part 1:
Part 2:

Enjoy!

The longest week ever.

2006-03-25T19:16:00.000-08:00

I almost never ever make purchases just for myself...so I rarely get an item that will do much for me and my music. As somebody pretty poor and married, I really can't justify that kind of purchase. So when I decided to build a computer last week(in the face of the awful grinding noises mine was starting to make and my refusal to put a dime in a 4 year old computer) I decided to buy a new one. Heres what I've learned has changed since the last one I built:
Theres no more AGP slots, theres no more IDE hard drives, FSB speeds are insano, processor speed has not changed that awfully much, and things are really, really cheap. My last computer was a steal when I built it for about 700-800 without a monitor. This one cost about $750 with a gorgeous black 19" LCD display.
I finally got the rest of it in the mail this monday and got it all together with the help of a good friend on AIM. Then in my upgrading spree I flashed the BIOS and suddenly lost all visibility on one of the hard drives. So its been a frustrating process trying to work the kinks out of XP but I think I've gotten everything running hard loose and clean. of course I say that this week.
Now I'm totally burdened with school work just in time for the first weekend with my new computer...its gonna be hard. I'm also wondering if I'll regret getting a good video card- because Unreal Tournament 2k4 now looks so amazing that its cutting into music time.
I talked to my advisor at school, who was new, and completely unsure of everything she was telling me, but I was given a projected graduation date of Spring of 07- about 13 months from now. So my school schedule is going to be insane for every semester till then so I can get out and make the kind of living that will finally allow for me to buy myself some stuff for music, like a vintage monosynth, a good digital mixer and an analog mic preamp...and maybe a desk that doesn't make me seasick when I type.

Endangered Species Alert: Synth Wank Records

2006-03-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

I tend to think about music like an ecosystem. Certain records precipitate or "cause" others to be born. Thus, its extremely important that diversity be preserved now, so that future diversity will also exist. Not that we're in some grave danger of losing all musical diversity...but just bear with me here for the sake of argument.
Synthesizer wanker records. What makes them? You need two elements. 1. A wanker- must be either totally rich or just so dedicated he buys gear instead of retirement or a girlfriend. 2. Lots of gear and gear obsession. Thats really the whole point of synth wank records.
Black and white is a popular theme in art, pictures of the "composer" (they are never to be called a musician or keyboardist) are a near requirement. Also, song titles should be something really pompous.
Take this Jean Michel Jarre (perhaps king of this genre) Record: Equinox. You can't read it from this picture so just trust me: every song is called "Equinox Part x." Underneath that is a list of synths I'd estimate to be the only one in the world almost as expensive as Vangelis's (truly a synth wanker) setup. That makes this a synth wank record - no question!

Let's now consider this next synth wank record: Synergy- Cords. Take a look at that presentation! They saw fit to make this one a gatefold just to include a grainy gel print of some art of the artist -in sunglasses. Just to let you know that the record isn't printed in black and white for lack of money? This record was also printed on translucent vinyl. What a budget. Synergy has another key element of a synth wank record: prog rock involvement. You didn't think they came up with this level of self importance on their own did you?
Synergy was a solo project of a guy involved with Peter Gabriel and guess what else... "a multi-artist space rock opera." If that doesn't say it all, I'm wasting your time. Apparently this dude's got quite a pile of keyboards too... He was involved in the development of a lot of electronic equipment during the time. Like guitar synths. Does that make him the Yngwie Malmsteen of keyboards? I'd have to meet him and see if he's really obnoxious to make that decision. Since this is the internet though, I'll just say he is.
On the subject of prog rock wankers, I'd like to present for you another grand product of synth wankery. Anthony Phillips was the guitarist of Genesis. That's instant wanker points. He's had the most prolific solo career of any of the members, producing over 25 records by my count. This particular record is 1984 and it's a real synth wank record jem. Featuring only 4 songs:
"Prelude '84" – 4:23
"1984 Part 1" – 19:00
"1984 Part 2" – 15:26
"Anthem 1984" – 2:27

Even when James Brown does a song over 10 minutes it starts to get annoying...but at nearly 20 minutes long you've got to really have a lot faith in your audience's willingness to believe you are as great a "composer" as you say you are. And to top this record off, its a synth record by a guitarist. I'm going to have to award Anthony Phillips the title "The David Chastain of Synth Wanker Records."
To me, records like this are nearly as funny as rock opera because the people that make them want to have it all at once. They want to be seen "seriously"(take a look at Jarre's brooding expression) and academically(like naming things 'two part invention,') but they also want the rockstar identity. But that sort of drive is sorely missing from the musicians I see today, and I have to question just who the modern equivalent of these guys is. As an electronic musician, I know a lot of modern synth wankers, but only a couple of this calibre of wankerness. Maybe software has just neutralized this genre of record/composer by making us all victims to the level of overchoice and equipment saturation that these guys faced.

Now in the other end of the 1970's synth record spectrum are the guys like poor Leon Lowman. A google on him brings up nothing, a google on the record brings up nothing, and yet his equipment list and photo looks like he spent a fortune. He doesn't seem to have any prog rock involvement, and he's got something that none of the other records mentioned have: he actually uses a short enough attack on his patches that I can tell he can play a keyboard! I have to give the guy credit, his record is a lot better than the others I've mentioned. Leon, I hope you find this when you Google yourself.
I'm not a fan of synth wank records in general, it's like the more stuff these guys get, the more inflated they and their work becomes. Most of it is pretty slow- none of it features the frenetic pace so popular throughout the 90's and the turn of the century. It's also totally melody centered: the drum work is pretty lame on most of it. It's like making these records was a lifestyle for the composer- the equipment would take up such huge amounts of money and space, require so much time, etc. It's no surprise to me that you don't see many ladies mentioned in the the long 'thank you's these records featured. Except poor Leon, who appears to be mentioning his Mom.(and I've got to love the guy for having the humility to thank his parents- it's pretty un-progrock to think your mother may listen to your record.) These records sound like electronic music NPR would reccomend, or maybe play on that show where the guy is always saying "so and so fires up his modular synthesizer for a night of ethereal blah blah blah."
I have no difficulty seeing records like this playing an important role in inspiring the electronic musicians who were productive around the time I became interesting in their music (about 1993-5) and thats why I keep them around. They point to a past in which I would never have been able to afford to justify being an electronic musician and married. ("Honey, I need another ARP 2600 for this song") They also serve as a cautionary tale- removed from the context of time and scene they are exposed as pretty boring music. As the vision of one person alone they also highlight the errors in judgement that can come from musical isolation.
Tune in next time for more reviews of records you can't buy.

Honorable mention:
Frankie Goes to Hollywood-Two Tribes(Annihilation)
Too late for consideration (1984) -also sounds like across between Jarre and a Yellow Record. Also features more than one person.

International Groceries

2006-03-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

"Please do not wash hands in fish tank" says the sign at the K&S World Market where I get my groceries every once and awhile. The market caters to every foreign demographic it can grab: middle eastern, asian, hispanic, and every possible variation therof. It's also one of the few groceries in Nashville that actually employs a butcher, making it a popular choice because foreigners can get every strange cut or part of an animal known to man.
I like getting my groceries here for a number of reasons: I see weird people...today a fat, sweaty man came up to the register carrying only a bag full of maroon colored octopus tentacles. It's kind of a wild place...no one can understand each other, there are people just reaching in and grabbing freshwater eels and crabs with their bare hands, and whats in a package could be anything- fried bamboo caterpillars or pineapple you have to see the picture. I always get inspired about cooking when I go. Mostly I like it because their produce is cheap and still has the dirt on it.
I also love to see what people buy. It's somehow a "great moment in American-ness" to see Nashville immigrant community start to branch out. I'll follow a Hispanic family through the market and watch them pick up plantains, avocados, jalapenos, and then...baby bok choy. It's also nice to see the domestic community starting to mix in more and more at places like these. Follow a bleached blonde white lady in an oversized Titans tshirt and a cellphone headset as she picks up basmati rice, doritos, some kind of asian instant shrimp soup, and a Kirin Lager. I'm hoping its because they like to be entertained when they get their groceries. It's like cheap tourism to see duck embryos or chicken feet by the pound. It's also cheap luxury items: I bought a pound of kalamata olives for under $4.
It's nice to see a part of town like the area between Murfreesboro Pike and Nolensville Rd be as successful as it has been. My guess is that there is more local business in that stretch of the city than in the entire greater nashville area combined. Definitely more places to get groceries in 5 miles than there are in my entire city of ~50,000. The immigrant community has revitalized a pretty nasty area of Nashville into a thriving and colorful area. Gas stations and banks get painted yellow and made into busy taquerias with great big barrel smokers and a collection of cowboy hatted hispanics and young black kids on bicycles.
I guess where I am going with this is: the immigrant community in Nashville is what makes me happy about living here.

From Josef Albers to Enoch Light

2006-03-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

Throughout most of the last 8 or so years I have aggressively collected as much of the Command Records catalog as I possibly could. I was drawn to the drama of the art, to the drama of the arrangements, and to the amazing quality of the recordings themselves. It's not that competitors like Phase 4 were necessarily bad, Exotic Percussion with Stanley Black is still probably the best exotica I've ever heard -Stanley Black makes me wonder how Martin Denny ever made a living.

The paintings on the covers of records like these are still interesting to me because they so accurately describe whats in them. And to me, thats where the Bauhaus comes into play. Josef Albers did the majority of the paintings for the Enoch Light/Command Records, theres the rest of the Bauhaus connection. The paintings submitted for the Enoch Light records would have been gorgeous had I ever seen them connected to the records or not. But seeing them serve such a brilliantly descriptive purpose and integrated into my life really makes them all the more valuable. Furthermore, the Command label began life at the stereo point of sale. A lot of records did. A lot of really awful records. Ping Pong percussion comes to mind..."bongo left, timbale right...::awkward arhythmic edit::begin pretty boring weepy strings of a Jerome Kern showtune." Enoch Light's recording sessions clearly spent a whole lot of time on mic placements and acoustics, and a lot of time on balancing the arrangement in the stereo field. Their level of workmanship on both the recording and and arranging level, coupled with the polish of their packaging, makes them some of the most professional and listenable "music as a product" that I've ever heard. They drift around at thrift stores all over the country in small numbers these days- or at least nothing near the level of saturation I met when I went digging for records as a 16 year old on some of my first trips driving myself.
I can't really say whether bins were that much better then, or whether they just seemed that way because I was so optimistic having found records like "Other Worlds, Other Sounds" and having my mind blown by hearing them the first time.

Post-Op

2006-03-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

I finished surgery at about 1:30 Wednesday. 2nd Stage Ossicullar Chain Reconstruction. So my prosthesis is in place. This surgery has been 100% easier than the last one to recover from. No incisions had to be made in my ear canal, and I kept my existing ear drum, so I didn't have to buy the $150 ear drops that I did last time. I stopped taking the painkillers today, I went 14 hours without noticing any real pain except for a headache from hell, so I figured I don't need them any more. It sounds like a deafening ultrasound is going on in my right ear.
I was prepared for a lot worse surgery, last time I was on the table nearly 6 hours, and it took me a week before I was comfortable leaving the house for any extended period of time because of exhaustion and vertigo.
My hearing has made some improvements so far, especially in my ability to localize sounds and to listen to a stereo recording and sense things like phase and direction. But its too soon to tell much, because I'm packed full of gauze and gel for the next 2 weeks. Once its all out, though, I should have pretty decent hearing in that ear according to my doctor. He considers the operation a success. I'm cautiously optimistic.

2006-02-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

Why The American Democratic Party is Driving Me Nuts

The only big things I care about in domestic politics are:
1. Affordable Healthcare/Free Healthcare
2. Living Wage

And I always considered these things to be pretty "liberal" issues. Still I just don't hear a lot of talk about it, I don't see much political action. In the democratic party's effort to try and attract more conservative voters, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Couldn't they cede a less important issue? And aren't all issues less important than healthcare? Why not make welfare stricter, disqualify some of those who don't deserve it in a hard audit, and then use that money to say, reduce the cost of healthcare across the board about about 5-10%?
All I see is the whining. The Democrats don't seem to put much in the way of constructive action forward, they just seem to play moral police every time anyone republican does something conservative(which, by the way, should not shock them nearly as much as it does.) All they do is react with a continuous level of "outrage" that I'm really starting to doubt is much more than theatrics.(Nancy Pelosi?)
They've had every possible chance so far to capitalize on the negative publicity surrounding the presidency and the majority whip scandals. What do they do? Sure as hell not anything very effective.
On a more grassroots level, Adbusters Magazine and the like are just that much more a manifestation of how the left in the U. S. is just wasting it's time and vital energy. So much young energy at their command, and the magazine reccomends not, say, building affordable housing, starting a farmer's market, or an employment agency for homeless people, but rather, that their readers black out logos on all surfaces in their daily life. They seem to have lost all the left's good will toward humanity, and replaced it with scorn and hostility for a world which voted Republican. They enjoy being the "morally superior" underdog, instead of helping people, they just complain about what has been done to them.
In short, I think that they've just gotten too comfortable with the role of minority and made themselves unfit for being a majority because of it. They've become too comfortable being convinced the world is going to hell, and they've started to enjoy this decline because it gives them something new to whine about or react to. I'm really starting to think that a total corporate dystopia would make the average Adbusters reader or Michael Moore fan happiest, because they would be able to say "I told you so" and then feel like a revolutionary all the more.

And then theres that problem where criticism from the inside of the left provokes total outrage.

2006-02-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

I read in the school (MTSU) newspaper this week that there was going to be a large sale of records and sheet music on campus from the MTSU library of pop music. Apparently these were duplicates from within the catalog, which the school claims contains almost every pop music recording ever. The paper said "fleamarket prices" which to me means about $1-3 per LP. I found a lot of records I might have bought at that price, except they were about $25 a piece. What a dissappointment. I did, however, get a very early Sway and King Tech LP(Flynamic Force) with had the added bonus of having the All City Crew promoters business card from 1988 in it! Art on the sleeve looks like hand drawn anime-ish versions of sway and king tech playing.
But on the way out, I picked up a couple issues of the Journal of Pop Music Studies or some such nonsense. They're issued yearly and I got three years.
What a load of crap Pop Music studies is. Did somebody make a living while writing this garbage? Almost without exception, the articles read like a cross between a Rolling Stone review and an amazon.com blurb... Talk about pointlessly self-absorbed rambling! Far and away the most entertaining of them all was an article called : Techno Music and Sonic Communities: When Modern Markets and Postmodern Pleasures Collide. So far from my reading it seems to revolve around the Chemical Brothers being mentioned on Beverly Hills 90210, and its written in a some sort of a self-absorbed combination of "9th grader impersonating Kerouac" and "19 year old pitchfork reader."
It's agonizing, but I have to keep reading, just because of my amazement that trash like this "academic journal" or this field of "pop music studies" even exists. Talk about a pointless pursuit.
Oh and I'm anxiously awaiting both my move and my surgery in two weeks, I may one day be able to listen to my stereo-rama records in stereo!

Now listening to:
Deb Hyer: One Man Band
The Holiday City Hot Cha Kitchen Band
The Creed Taylor Orchestra: SHOCK! Music in Hi-Fi!

2006-02-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

So, its the day before Christmas Eve, and my apartment building is on fire while I stand outside in aqua socks and shorts in December. The next day, I call Comcast about my internet access, which has been running slow, and constantly disconnecting.
They offer to send somebody out, but I don't wanna make some poor dude work on Christmas Eve...nor do I want to deal with the quality of work I would recieve from some inept contractor on Christmas Eve.
Now, its February 6th. 6 Technicians and 5 service visits later, my internet is still unbearably slow, I can't play online games, I can't watch a video, nothing!

Here's the laundry list of bull I have been fed:

Tech 1: Your "reverse-noise" level is too high! Your signal needs turned down.

Tech 2: "I've never heard of 'reverse noise', I think he must have made that up. You must have been moved on a splitter fed to your building, I'll move you down to the two way splitter.

Tech 3: Your signal is much too high, it needs stepped down.

Tech 4: You have problems because of the cable traps on your line, let me remove them.

note that this tech also told me his name was uhhh John and his number was 169, he also sat down at my computer on a sunday morning and looked at government auctions for impounded cars for like 20 minutes.)

Call Center: There is an area wide problem with two towns(the one I'm moving from and the one I'm moving to) It should be resolved.

Call Center rep 2: I haven't heard anything about an area outage, I will upgrade you to the 8mbit internet access as a gift. (that was no gift, my bill was $10 higher the next month)

So now its been a month that I've tolerated this complete ineptitude, confusing and misleading lines about what the problem is, lack of professionalism, and general USELESSNESS.

The real problem? They're pretty much the only broadband option in my area!
I hate to give people like this a dime, though. I also hate to feel trapped, the only other real options are satellite and DSL(both of which are almost as miserably useless as this cable company!)
They should fear the day I fidn more options!