Dusting off the old identity.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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...