Bionic Teutonic

Last night Ariel and I tried to go to the Raphael Saddiq show at the Showbox. We haven’t been going out the last few years much. I usually find myself fairly uninterested in clubs or bars these days, but both Ariel and I are big Saddiq fans, so we decided to go. When I went to go buy tickets online, Ticketmaster was charging $8.50 per ticket on a $20 ticket. That’s almost half again as much! What the hell? I actually balked at that and got all worked up (’monopoly’, ‘gauging’, ‘evil’, etc) and didn’t buy the ticket. We didn’t think the show would sell out anyway, and that we’d just go down there early and get tickets. We got all dressed up fancy for the show, drove down, parked the car, walked up to the Showbox in the cold, only to find a big ‘SOLD OUT’ sign on the door. Bummer. Seriously though, something about Ticketmaster is just wrong. How can they charge almost half again as much as the full ticket price? Of course, me getting worked up about it meant that I didn’t get see the show, so I sort of shot myself in the foot, but it still irks me. We need a revolution.

I sent out a song I just finished to a couple friends recently. My friend Ariel V responded with maybe the most satisfying response I’ve ever gotten to my music. I love how she references times in the song along with her story. This makes me happy.

“I listened, and I love it!  It’s got a sense of wistfulness and mystery that are engaging.  Here’s my journey:  You’re  going on a treasure locating adventure in the woods, softly going along the trail, trees blowing gently in the breeze.  And then you find a dark pond (1:08) and you’re all like “what’s going on in this pond,” and then you see that it’s full of lovely fishes! 1:30.  So you hang and dance by the pond while the fishes do their thing, and then you look up at the trees (1:53) and you all wave your boughs.  You’re pretty happy here, your smile grows.  Then at 2:23 you take a little rest, remembering your distant sweetheart who is away on a long challenging adventure, and you don’t really know where things stand with her so you’re kind of wistful, but you know she’s off rocking the world and that’s cool.  Then you remember (3:27) that life is kind of like that, a long challenging and also beautiful journey with both sadness and coolness, and there is no need to be wistful, it just is what it is.  You walk back on the trail, this time more evenly, and head back home having solidified your sense that it is all part of the whole.”

So, I have a bunch of music that I’ve been working on. I have a space on my hard drive that acts as a sort of audio sketch book where I try out ideas, play around with sounds, etc. Most of this never goes anywhere, but some of the ideas are good enough to develop into songs (at least I hope they are). I’m trying to figure out which of my latest sonic doodlings I should turn into full-blown songs and figured I’d try an experiment here to get some feedback and see what you guys think. I’m looking for the top 3 to work on, so if you are out there and like any of these, let me know what your favorites are and the ones that people like the most, I’ll work on. Deal? OK then.

Here are little snippits of the tracks: sketch 1,  sketch 2,  sketch 3,  sketch 4,  sketch 5,  sketch 6,  sketch 7

We had a great time at Harbin last weekend. I couldn’t get any pictures really, as cameras are not allowed there (I guess they don’t want you taking pictures of all the naked hippies but we rocked it. It was really nice to have some time to just relax and catch up on sleep. We spent a bunch of time in the pools and had a really great time hanging out with our friend Rara and his fiance Jumana. Rara and I spent a morning in his studio on Saturday. I got him to play guitar over a track I’m working on and we also just geeked out on music, discussing ideas and techniques. It was nice to have somebody to shoot the musical shit with again. I’ve been missing that for a while. Harbin itself is beautiful. It’s located in a really beautiful valley just north of Napa and we got to take some really nice hikes in the surrounding hillsides. The resort is surprisingly big actually. It’s so spread out that you only rarely get a sense for how many people are there at any one given time, but there were probably several hundred guests I would say. I was looking forward to doing yoga in the mornings, but the yoga there was sadly very much on the new age tip – not so much on the physical practice.

This weekend I’m getting a new tattoo. I’ve been wanting another one for a while and I had a consultation this week, so I’m all set. I’m getting the ashtanga yoga mantra Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu in devanagari sanskrit around my arm, with some stylised clouds behind it. It means may all beings find peace and happiness, which I like. Plus devanagari is beautiful.

OK, I’m officially Apple’s bitch. To go along with my new laptop, I just went out and bought a new iPod video the other day. I love it. I know that there are other mp3 players out there, and I even bought one a while ago, but they don’t interface with iTunes and they are always somehow a pain in the ass. My iPod however, is loaded with music and I’ve been listening to it non-stop. My only complaint is that I’ve been swapping music with some of my co-workers, and they make it such a pain in the ass to do this. The thing that pisses me off about all the copy-protection shit people try and implement is that I’m going to get around it anyway (it’s not that hard), and it makes things a pain in the ass for both legitimate uses as well as illegal uses that should be my own business anyway. It’s like trying to ban blank tapes back in the day (which the music industry did try to do). It’s stupid and only serves to make me angry. I’m getting and sharing my music anyway. </rant>

Ariel and I are leaving for Harbin tomorrow. Looking forward to lots and lots of relaxation. I’ll post pictures when I get back.

I just got a new laptop (I bought a Macbook Pro from my friend Damon) and spent all weekend loading it up with software and starting the long process of reading manuals and playing around so I understand how everything works. I have to say, it’s amazing how far computers have come in the last 5 years or so. I have pretty much everything I could ever need music wise loaded onto a 1/4″ thick piece of metal and circuitry. It really blows the mind. Ariel, Tim and I also had a 3-way video chat yesterday (sounds kinky, but it wasn’t). Tim was puttering around preparing food for Marzipan (his dog) in his new house in N.Y. while Ariel and I were on our various laptops here in Seattle. We live in the future and it’s amazing.

I’m excited about making music again, which is cool. I haven’t really had the bug very badly for a while, but having the new laptop, not being confined to a basement studio, and just being engaged with the software again has given me a little kick. Hopefully I can integrate it back into being an integral and sustainable part of my life again. If anybody ever has the bug to write some music or just get together and share ideas, let me know. I’m feeling it right now.