Category: Musicology
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Manufacturing
The files are off the the manufacturer and if you just can’t contain yourself, you can preorder a CD now! No One Does It Solo Only by Layers of Meta
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This one time…
No One Does It Solo Only by Layers of Meta is now available for pre-order at Bandcamp: No One Does It Solo Only by Layers of Meta
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Serendip
Made a last minute choice to swing up to Menlo Park after work to a little place called Bar Loretta, tucked inside a restaurant called Left Bank, apparently on the site Magoo’s Pizza Parlor, the site of the first proto-Grateful Dead show sixty years ago. Billed as the Warlocks still, the show featured the first…
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Master and sequencer
Another milestone! I’m listening to digital masters for the album and thinking about the gaps, the little breathers between the end of one song and the start of the next. We should have those fine details sorted by next week, after which the files go off the Crooked Cove (to manufacture the CDs) and CD…
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Wooosh
A good friend of mine talks about that feeling of creative flow in which it gets easier to make your ideas real. It comes and goes on its own but you can certainly invite and you can definitely chase it way. You can at the very least leave the door open and cultivate the habit…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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…
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Listening partly
This evening we’re having a listening party at the Rorke place. After some pizza and non-gluten food and mingling, we’ll listen to the 46 minutes or so of my record in the form of twelve preliminary mixes. Many of the core players, who are also, friends, will be there to give their feedback and notes.…
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Maps and legends
The record is starting to exist now in two digital senses, a sort of digital conception as they come together. First, it now has a commercial pointer in the universal pricing code namespace. This currently has no relevant data associated with it, but it soon will. It comes courtesy of the shop that will be…
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Sticking the landing
Hard to believe it’s been three weeks since the great 18F massacree. Hard to believe it’s only been three weeks. Hard to believe this administration has only been at it for eight weeks. Five more weeks to go of administrative leave. We keep meeting and making plans and helping each other stay organized and look…
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A funny thing happened on the way to the charger
Last night I saw a hot damn show up in Sebastopol at a brewpub called the Hopmonk. The main act, Pokey LaFarge (and band), and the opener, Cicada Rhythm, were both a hoot. It felt like a walk through the 20th century, from hot jazz to jump blues to texas swing to jumping jive to…
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Making merry
Ending another long week in the company of friends. This afternoon I took advantage of my administrative leave to drive up to Sebastopol through several rain squalls and traffic jams to have dinner at the Goldfinch (mostly seafood — I had champagne with my oyster) and then see a show at the Hopmonk brewpub. Still…
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So much for the preliminaries
Got back down to Goody Sound Studio today and we wrapped up the preliminary mixes on all twelve songs for my record! Today we tuned up “Giving Zoo Wolves Lessons in Music” and David Gans added some ethereal backing vocals. This track also has David on guitar, Robert Wade on bass, Javier Navarrette on congas…
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Songs for a new day
Making a record of original songs has been a dream come true. Every step of the way (and we’re not there yet) has been a joy. At the same time, this relentless focus on polishing the first twelve songs I wrote has inadvertently slowed down my pace of finishing songs to nearly a dead stop,…