christian crumlish doing stuff
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More punk than you
Reading sadly of David Thomas’s death at 71 of kidney failure it appears, the legendary founder of Pere Ubu. Remembering how my hipper than thou postpunk mentor and now-famous game pundit Jeff Green told me about first seeing him before a show and wondering something like who the fat guy in the used car salesman…
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Please stand by…
Something I did yesterday took the site down for part of today. I think it’s fixed now but I’m still having trouble connecting from my home wifi. Cache flow problem, I suppose.
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Celebrate every milestone
I just signed off on the final edits to “Sham Song.” it’s fitting that the one I started writing before I ever wrote a real song would be the last one perfected for my Perfectible Recordings record. I learned long ago to recognize a celebrate every step along the way of a long journey, every…
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Look who slept over
Now that the weather has turned fine, the grand dame of local neighborhood outdoor cats (we call her “Yowlie”) is spending a lot of time in B’s pleasure garden, where the bees are buzzing around the borage field, the lupines are popping, and the oaks are leafing out. Some mornings I accidentally startle her after…
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Back at the keyboard
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it today! I went to bed late last night and had a momentary diarist’s bout of conscience for not having added anything to the pile here yesterday. And yet I was writing all day. Have been, really, for at least a week now. I’m trying to get a bunch…
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End of an era
This refrigerator lived in this house long before I even met B. Her mom and dad bought it in the 1970s. Stuff back then may not have been as energy-efficient but they built to last, which saved the energy needed to make a new fridge for 50 years.
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Houston, we have a CD sleeve
Thanks to the amazing artwork of Dave Gray and the tasteful design choices and execution of Rowan Bishop, my group’s forthcoming record No One Does It Solo Only now has a design for the sleeve of the CD! Looks like the song order is on lock now too.
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Chaos and cruelty
Elaine Godfrey has a thorough and well sourced article in the Atlantic explaining how the current regime is willfully disrupting the functioning of the government and the wellbeing of public servants. I feel for my colleagues who have not yet been illegally fired or forced to quit to preserve their own integrity. Nobody wants to…
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First impressions
I’m back in the product business. As we get closer to the scheduled June release of No One Does It Solo Only, I have to think about packing, merchandising, distribution, website, and so on. I mean, I like thinking about things like that. I liked it when I was in book publishing, I like it…
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So much winning
Got my first ever attempted maga spam on this blog today. It never made it to my site though. Moderation tools for the win.
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Record store day!
Drove up to Oakland this morning to meet my pals in Rockridge to check out some new vinyl releases for this spring’s record store day at Open Mind Music (and, it turns out, Stranded up the street). After a scare with a lost phone and some very good samaritans we each headed home with our…
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How to weaponize innumeracy
Protests work. They got a family home from Texas to Homan’s home district, and they got the DOGEcrats to back off their plan to shut down Social Security phone lines. Along the way, Yale-educated elite novelist J.D. Vance made this false claim: 40% of calls are fraud
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Tiny Herald
It’s been a while since I rounded up my microblogging / nanopublishing posts, but they have been thinner on the ground as well, I think? Let’s see!
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I love it when a plan comes together
I don’t want to jinx anything but it feels like we are on track for a June 11 release date for my album (in digital formats). We’re in the homes stretch now
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New sounds of silence
I’ve recently been following this artist on Soundcloud, Sarah Walker, whose specialty is freely reinterpreting standards of the past (many of them from my own formative years) in what I might say is a more contemporary style, reminiscent of popular singer-songwriters of the moment (think Tay Tay, et al.). The premise seems to be imagine…
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Abraham Lincoln did not invent the corndog
Despite what I was informed today, I am told this is actually not true. That topic came up during the “banter” segment of our team coffeeshop, while we were getting the translators set up properly. After that we talked about or own business, thank you very much. Many things are afoot.
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Oligarchs considered harmful
The influence of billionaires over our lives worries me. I recall reading Tom Friedman (who has his own issues but got this one right) discussing the age of superempowered individuals after bin Laden horrified us into endless wars. I remember people in Kauai being, at least initially, relieved when Zuck bought up an old valley,…
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Effective government, please
Efficiency is all the rage, even in the blue states. “Do more with less” is the battlecry. In my day it was “work smarter not harder” but I think harder work harder is the secret sauce in today’s wishful thinking, that and the panacea of frictionless perfect totally not scary nor dangerous AI. But (forgive…
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The west coast bagel cycle
Have I ever told you my bagel theory of coastal arbitrage? It goes a little something like this: Someone fresh from New York City (ideally Brooklyn but honestly anywhere in the tri-state area works) moves to San Francisco or a nearby part of the Bay Area. After poking around for a little while and trying…
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A fresh chance to fork ourselves
Friday evening (of course) a new email went out, still visible to those of us wraiths whose devices continue to function as ersatz radio receivers, with the Good News! that the fork is back on. It’s not that they’re having trouble legally hitting their arbitrary and foolish firing targets, of course. Nor could it be…
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New order (movement)
The listening party was a blast! I don’t think we got any notes on the arrangements (though I have a handful of tweaks in mind for several of the songs), but we had a great discussion about the sequencing, the flow of the songs, the emotional highs and lows, where to start each “side” (even…