This is so hot.

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

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

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.

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

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"

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

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

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.

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

A Very Special Treat

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.

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

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

"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

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

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.

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.

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!

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!

So, since that last blog I have rounded up two more songs, bringing the total number of album-worthy vocal tracks to 8 or 9. I am contemplating track orders, and what sort of cohesive elements I could add to the record in the form of transitions, instrumentals(of which there will probably be 2-5) and the like. I have also been thinking a lot about what I want the cover art to be like, what kind of material and look I want the liner notes to have, etc. What's difficult for me is knowing when a phase has ended. I think I will consider the phase I am in now to be officially over when it comes time for me to move and expand the studio into the bigger place I will be getting in March.
Because I have recieved sponsorship I can depend on, this release will not be a CDR, it will be a CD professionally duplicated and screen printed. Packaging is something still up in the air to me...I rarely explain actual technique or talk about equipment, but I think it would add a very interesting element to the liner notes to explain the studio, because every body of work I make feels like such a picture of life in that location and in that studio. Also because I should get street cred for having made the record I have on a computer with a bad fan bearing, in a room with standing room only to record in, while living on just under $15,000/year.
I am also struggling with promotion and marketting for the record, because my "empage" will die soon, and that had previously been a major contributor to any limited publicity I have had. I am going to try and get a lot of promotional copies mailed out to college stations, and then call and request the songs. I am also considering guerilla marketting an easily rememberable URL with some cheap one color screened stickers.
I need a real website, and I need a good website. I can't do this stuff live almost at all, so I'll need a good way to get the music out. I plan on offering plenty of material from the record online, but keeping the bulk of it available only by purchasing the album or requesting it on the radio.
I need advice on this process, because its all new to me. Anyone got any kind of basic marketting tips for me?

Current listening:
Choubi Choubi! A Collection of Iraqi Pop and Funk
Funkytown Budapest: Hungary 1970s
Ho! Roady Music of Vietnam
Flanger: Spirituals

So, my newest record is starting to enter that phase where I can start to feel things gel and develop that environment and character that are conducive to cohesion and finishing. I've been sorting out the 20-30 drafts I have for the record, finalizing and redoing some arrangements. I'm so excited to listen to what I've got so far.
Also finished a real chart topper of a song called "bikini monsters with keytars" which will be album release material only- and it's not often I do that.
I'm gonna get just a couple more songs together.
The album will be in lyrical>instrumental alternating order, and if it ever gets pressed, then A side will be vocal cuts, and b-side is all instrumental.
I just haven't yet figured out how to promote the damned thing though. I know its probably a total waste of time to push it on the electronic community, and that it would probably go over better with rock fans...to whom it would seem much more dazzling than it does to the electronic crowd.(sad but true-many rock fans are baffled by bands containing keyboards)
and I am out to DAZZLE.
It may, in some form or another, also include an EP of about 5-10 minutes of original disco I had made for a halloween release but was unable to finish on time.
record's tentative title is:
"The Genius of deltasleep!"