Category: Blog

This blog contains music, cats, and things of less importance.

Barbercontenheimerglobbus

Resharing this from my Substack..

In which..

Ba Ba Ba, Ba Barbarella, Ba Ba Ba, Ba Barbenheimer, Ba Ba Ba, Be Bop a Thing..

Hello! It’s Caturday and there are things to be done. Cats to be played with, guitars to strum. Rivers to jump in, if it can be arranged.

What of the movies? Barbenheimer, or as I prefer, Oppenbarbie. Will I set foot in a movie theater for the first time in lo these many years? I might. I hope it’s not too loud. My last movie theater experience was bad. Too loud, and, lots of commercials! Yes, commercials. You pay the cover, you pay for parking, you buy the popcorn, you’ve paid, right? Captive audience, commercials. No mute button. This plus internets has made me stay home for my movies. But.. Barbarellaheimerbarbenopalypse.. I think it’s on. I may need to experience this moment of popular culture in its undiluted form. The Barbie preview – I pulled it up on Apple TV yesterday, and wow. I think I like. As for Oppenbabyheimerdude, I have read quite a bit about him, and his brothers, and his colleagues and friends and lovers, over the years. A fascinating and complex man to be sure. Epic moral dilemmas, giant world-changing science with huge secret team in the desert, why not? What we need is both films, side-by-side or even overlapping, to save time and maximize popcorn value. I’d sit through commercials for that.

OK, CONTENT! All of this is content. The writers and actors strike brings up so many fascinating issues. AI does its inevitable advance and hoomans try to understand it. An amusing feature to all this is the ads I see on FB and elsewhere – telling me to use AI to write blog posts or songs. I find it darkly funny that people would spend money to buy ads and target me with that message. I can spell out the reason, that will never appeal to me in any way at all: THE MEANING OF LIFE!

The meaning of life. I enjoy writing, creating, recording, and all of these things. I do them because they are fun. I learn things about myself, by doing them. I might entertain some people, or even inspire them, sometimes, by creating and sharing things that start in my imagination. So, no, thank you, dear AI company, I think I’ll not have you doing the fun bits instead of me.

Hey, my second solo album comes out August 1! This is the title track, sort of, and it may address some of these hot topics. Be well, stay cool and hydrated, <3 E

Down Home Shindig

About a year ago I visited Down Home Music for a wee panel-ish discussion with author Bill Kopp, on his fab 415 Records – Disturbing The Peace book tour. After the event, the good folks at Down Home asked me if I’d like to come in and do a solo set sometime, and sure enough, that’s what I’ll be doing this August 12 right around 2PM.  We’ll have a flier for this soon I think, and I’ll share it up on the accursed socialnets then, and for now, here it is on a wee down home bloggy post. Pop on in, say hi, it’s free! On a Catursunday, no less.

7-22, Updating with flier 🙂

Misinformed single is now available and we are tickled

Log rolls downstairs, alone or in blogs..

Hey! I haven’t written here in a while, and I’m excited to pop in and share a few items this morning.

I just released a new song called Misinformed. It’s on Bandcamp now and will hit the streaming contraptions in about a week.

This is the first track on my CONTENT album, which has an official release date of August 1, a CaturTuesday. Why a few months out? So we can release some singles in advance of it and have some fun putting some light on a few individual songs before publishing the whole kaboodle. So here’s an ask – (“ask” is a noun, now, I’m dealing with it..) – my ask is that you give ‘er a listen and if you dig it, buy or share it or both. Elaborate, no? This is our marketing strategy. YOU are our marketing strategy. And regardless of any of it we send you big kittycat love on this auspicious Caturday.

On August 12, also a Caturday, I’m singing a few songs from both my STREET PARTY and CONTENT albums, at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, around 2PM. I’ll be doing this solo, with an acoustic guitar, perhaps telling a yarn or two about my creative journeys and whatever comes to mind, we shall see, and y’all are invited to pop in and join me. The good folks at Down Home will have copies of both albums on CD available for sale, for any CD-inclined cats among ye. We’ll call it my book tour, even though, it’s not a book. It is content, however, I can confidently say.

Terry Hall steps on

The first time I saw Terry Hall perform, it was on a movie screen at the UC Theater in Berkeley. Dance Craze was the movie, and I’m confident it changed the lives of most or all of the attendees.  The Specials became one of my most favorite bands, the ones I can count on one hand, in the space of a few bars. Instant, total, lifelong fandom and a deep and genuine affection.

On the news that Terry Hall has passed, all this comes flooding back to me.

I had this great mythology, or narrative, about The Specials, when I was 15, based on vinyl records of their first two albums, and their Ghost Town EP.  Their names. Their look, their presence, their message. It was so one thousand percent right, for me.  I absolute love them. I missed their original run by a year, and when I finally got to see them live with most of their original lineup, at the Fox Oakland just a few years ago, they lived up to every bit of my imagined brilliance of them, about 40 years later. What a ridiculously great band. I still think their message is one of the most vital.

My thought for Terry Hall is gratitude. I am so grateful for you, and your bands, and the music you made. It will live forever.

And love. I don’t know if you know, how much you are loved, Terry Hall.
You’re a one-off.  May your beautiful soul rest in peace. Condolences and love to your band and family.  You live on in so many.  Goodnight

Twaaap

Yesterday I ranted, that I did not want any more social networks. It was a lie. I would be delighted if a better platform emerged, that was not driven by advertising and raw capitalism, but rather by our human desire to connect, and stay in touch.  I’ve joined a few attempts at this, and honestly, I can’t even remember the names of them.  Because nothing happened there.  My posts were ignored, much as they were on Twitter.  I don’t pretend to have anything particularly brilliant to say, but at least in FB, I experience some quality interaction.  Many of my real friends are there, amongst my FB friends.  Some I don’t really know well, but all I find interesting.  I’ve curated my friends list fairly carefully, since 2007.  I pass on friend requests that seem dubious, and block the occasional trumpy.  I have no time for them.  If there were some way to export my friends list from here and import them into a new platform that is less ruthless and more wise, I would do it.  Maybe someone can write an app for that ?
Doesn’t seem likely.
Anyway, I’m still here.  All of this is temporary.  But of all the social networks I have tried, FB is the most significant, for me.  Because so many of my peers are there. As Twitter collapses, and the world turns, I wonder where we will gather in the digital space, in another 10 years.

Tweeep

I don’t miss Twitter.  I quit on the day whatshisbutt took over.  I now have one less site to update when I publish a song, or a podcats episode, or mewsletter.  I find I like less, more, these days.  The other day someone sent me an invite to another webby socially networky thing, and the only emotion I felt was anxiety.  Based on that, I didn’t click through to learn more about how this was the better revolutionary democratizing responsible fun platform of the future because I don’t believe it and I don’t care.  Bah.  I’ve gone full get off my lawn about this.  There’s no sense in denying it.  Humbug and bosh. 

Now then, I feel better.  TODAY The Cow Song went live in boodles of streaming noodles, AND is famous in a subway car somewhere, apparently. 

 

 

Nay, I lie, it’s a pic from Distrokiddy’s nifty raft of promotional widgetys, of which I am a user.  User, isn’t that a word for our times?  Are you a user?  I am a power-user.  I was an early adapter (adopter?).  I don my pondering cap and cop: I AM DISENAMORED OF TEH INTERWHUTS!!

Language, spelling, these things are gone.  In the Before Time there were Copy Editors – I, myself, am still at times, a copy editor!  Professionally or with friends, I enjoy it.  And yet I also enjoy inventing words or spellings.  The meaning can be enhanced or altered, satirized or twizzled, anyporp is mossible.  Take for example, DISENAMORED.  I mean it’s plain, what it means. 

Liberties we take.  Do dictionaries stand a chance, anymore?  Official words in the Oxford Officialdom?  How can they keep up now?  How long did it take for Tweet to become a noun, a verb, and nothing to do with birds, enabling the end of civility, and Dystopian Crushing Darkness And Despair (DCDAD)?  We study, we wonder.   I DON’T MISS IT!  I didn’t like it.  The fact that it’s imploding while “Meta” also creaks and lurches precariously is interesting.  The era is shifting. What next, I wonder.

I double-space my sentence breaks and fall easily in love with English professors.  I LOVE language and the little rules of it, the ever-changingness of it, I’m fascinated that recording artists exist with names you can’t read phonetically.  I form whole sentences with emojies sometimes.  It’s like hieroglyphics – getting back to the foundations of written language.  Here’s a picture of a bird.  Here’s a smiley.  Here’s a heart.  I understand.  

CaturRanterSunday, it must be.  I don’t want any new user accounts in anything.  I’m going to try and trim it back further, so I have less to deal with.  My fascination with social networks has waned, and FB is the only one I’m still on, for now.  Oh and I grudgingly try to use Instagram but I find their interface utterly incomprehensible.  They want you to do it on their app, of course.  Everyone wants you to have an app, for their things.  I prefer my laptop, I prefer not having apps, I would prefer standardization of navigation methods and metaphors, and, I would like a pony.   Double-space..   thank you,

Good afternoon

Content? Content. Contented? Contend. Content!

The last few years have been very productive, creatively, for me. Diggin it, recording at home and at friends’ studios occasionally, writing new tunes or revisiting songs that I’ve had percolating a long time. Part of what motivates me is wanting to create these tracks while I’m alive, as I’ve studied the matter, and I suspect I won’t be very effective at it once I’m dead! Not that I’m ailing or anything, knock on wood, I’m fine, but we have this looming expiration date we can’t know, and for whatever reason, I have a consistent desire to explore songwriting and music production and share a catalog of my various doings. Inherently eclectic, it turns out.. I’m not a resident of any genre. I visit them and play around, pretty much follow my muse wherever it leads these days. So in Sept. I released Bond Meets The Godfather, a ska song, and this month recorded and shared The Cow Song, a campfire acoustic little number. Back in April I released a full album of songs called Street Party – and so strangely, that starts to feel like a long time ago, already! Life is a journey, innit? I’m enjoying walking. Doing some positive, creative things helps mitigate the Overwhelming Angst Of Multiple Converging Apocalypses (OAOMCA) which seems to afflict most of us these days. Lighting candles, rather than cursing the darkness, I am, or trying to. I thiiiiiink this winter break I’m gonna get my second full-length ready to share.. aaaaand, I’m gonna share the cover art for that this weekend! It’s called “CONTENT” in a sort of tribute to how every bit of music and art or videos or blogs or god knows what is generically called “content” in the digital world, and how this amuses, horrifies, and delights me.

Lions and Tigers and Bots

News items, links, and bears! Brooklyn Vegan ran a lovely preview of Street Party, last week.  The album is now on all the fancy streaming services, linked to from here. The CD is available by mail order directly from me, have at it here.  What else?  It’s exciting to get this into the world, finally!  Lyric sheets and track credits are in the individual Bandcamp song pages, such as this one.  Please enjoy, and feel free to share any ol’ which way!  Thanks <3

Photo by Thomas White (on some drums he played on this very album!)