Category: Blog

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

Zen and the Art of Catbox Maintenance

I enjoy cleaning out the catbox. I consider this a great spiritual achievement. One could easily find it an icky chore, but no, with proper ventilation, attitude, and gloves, it is a gateway to enlightenment.

The weekend, that grand invention of labor unions in recent centuries, I embrace it. Work has been good, creative work has been good, today I swim, do laundry and housecleaning and “clean up nice,” as mentioned in my recent “Doin’s.”

There’s this cafe in North Beach, I don’t recall the name, I don’t know if it’s there anymore, but on a nice Spring or Summer evening in 1986ish I sat there in the open front next to the sidewalk at a table with a girlfriend and we sipped cappuccinos and watched people, and I felt entirely where I wanted to be. It’s a nice feeling, sometimes, to be right where you are in the moment and not feel you need to be somewhere else. A luxury, a blessing, a great luck. That cafe is now the Happy Accident Cafe in

Much of my earlier youthful creative output was driven by a certain anxiousness, desire and dissatisfaction, wanting to be elsewhere, frustration. I think that’s true of a lot of rock n’ roll and youthful music in general, right? I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, one of my favorite songs of all time, I mean it’s all right there in the title.

I put my angst to fairly good use, I think, in younger days. At some point, adulthood beckoned and I didn’t know what to do with it. Ya wanna have kids? Nah, not ready. Ya wanna do something other than chase your band dreams? Nah, not ready. I was a teenager until about the age of 50, I think. It was fun. I recommend postponing adulthood, for those who want to. Some of my friends were born grown up. Old souls, already mature as kids, comfortable in their shoes. Satisfied. It takes all kinds.

Now I do the adulting, in my own peculiar way. It is also fun. Why did the world decide to go stark raving mad just as I decided to grow up? One of life’s mysteries. What next, I wonder?

I do have a few remembrances to write for some recently passed friends. I’ll see if I can actually do that. Very adult-y, this dying business. In youth, that seemed more abstract.

Gotta do the exercise, take the vitamins, eat and sleep right. Oh my I must prepare my taxes also. With all the patience and Zen of catbox cleaning. Severe adulting, that.

Oh, THANKS sincerely for your purchases of The UpTones In the Studio 1987 EP, and my recent solo material, and other Berkeley Cat caterwaulings! It is, dare I say, SATISFYING! To get our material out there, and speakin’ o’ UPtones, there’s actually more, where that came from. Archaeology to be continued..

How to stylize a name, funny thing, right? We started, it was The Up-Tones! ..complete with the dash and exclamation mark, and why not? Still my favorite, honestly. There was also an arrow on the left side of the U, pointing up, naturally, and sometimes the dash was also an arrow. We loved arrows. Very Mod, the arrow thing. We did shows and in the newspaper ads the stylizing was text only, usually all-caps, just “THE UPTONES” and sometimes even the utterly mundane “UPTONES” ..I was disproportionately mad, about that. Called the club, “Our name is THE UpTones, can’t you?!” To no avail, usually. And they never did the arrows. I have an arrow pointing up on my arm – my only tattoo – and a useful reminder of which way is up. Got it when I was 18. A bit faded, but it remains! As tattoos do.

Well anyway, cheers to all here, thanks for following this mewsletter and hopefully enjoying some of our records. Stay well and do the necessary adulting, I say, but not toooo much!

Eric Din,
BCR Catbox Maintenance Officer (CMO),
signing off

cropped from a poster from 1983

Republished from the Berkeley Cat Records Mewsletter:

Intention and Odds and Prophets

“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home,” famously said Ernest Shackleton to his men, at a moment when the chances for any of them to reach home or civilization alive again were extremely remote.

Was it sincerity, or was it willful optimism in the interest of good leadership? Who can know, though I suspect it was probably all of that.

It wouldn’t do to say, “We’re toast, gentlemen, there’s little hope and I reckon we’re doomed, but let’s just trudge along a while longer in futility and despair.” This may not have motivated individual effort and teamwork, one thinks.

“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home.”
Such perfect language.

Many point to Sir Ernest Shackleton as an example of a great leader, and he unassailably was, for in the end, his entire crew survived that series of ordeals, each escape from doom more miraculous than the last, and credit where due, that’s amazing. I’d offer that a great leader might instead of sailing headlong into the coldest most inhospitable-to-humans place on earth just have taken the lads to a pub for a tipple and pies by the fire but of course, then we wouldn’t have heard of them.

Still, great leadership. And why, just the other week, some of my team leaders hosted a holiday party with hearty beverages and song. Famous? Nay, but great. Yet, I digress.

Aboard the crippled spaceship Apollo 13, Jim Lovell asked his two flight-mates what their intentions were. And, he told them simply, he wanted to go home. Their odds of safe return were as bleak at that moment as Shackleton’s had been when he said “we’ll go home,” but that was the task at hand, and they set out to do it. The teamwork between them and the ground crew was so brilliant and spectacular, and of course it’s all beautifully portrayed in the Ron Howard film. When pressed for the odds of survival by an annoying and stupidly unhelpful president Nixon, flight director Gene Kranz snaps back, “We are not losing those men!”

Intention. Leadership. They didn’t lose those men.

These are famous stories. Not as famous are the infinitely more common stories where the odds were bleak, and then all hands perished. Maybe there were inspiring speeches, “We’ll go home, mates,” just before a ship is swamped and dashed on the rocks. Ron Howard won’t make that movie, and why would we want to see it?

What of now, our ship of state. What of values, and the rule of law. What of a habitable biosphere, and the biodiversity that requires, which human society stupidly obliterates. What of all these simultaneous existential crises?

We’re Apollo 13 halfway around the moon, a thin fragile layer between us and oblivion, careening toward an uncertain fate over which we have only some minimal control. What’s our leadership, who’s our Shackleton, our Jim Lovell, our Gene Kranz? Surely we have many a qualified candidate, but, these persons are presently not running our federal government. To the contrary we have these belligerent imbeciles bent on ruining all that is good. Rather than bringing to bear our wisest, smartest, best scientific and moral minds as the Apollo 13 team did, and Shackleton’s team did, it’s.. this.

Until we have good leadership in power again, I suppose we have to build our own morale, and try and set good examples for each other. I try not to share my bleaker assessments. But they creep out of me; I can’t be so message-disciplined all of the time. I think the chance for handling the climate crisis intelligently was blown, the deadline has passed – it was Nov. 5 of 2024, and botched. No one wants to hear that. Ron Howard wouldn’t make that movie. And I don’t want to be right. We’ll see.

Humans can do remarkable, amazing things. Or we can be so acutely stupid. We seem to be in The Age Of Stupid. Inconvenient timing, since the forces of nature won’t wait.

Anyway it’ll level off, this Anthropocene. Human population will peak, then plummet. Strange time to be alive, really. An amazing privilege to be present and witness it all. I remain curious as to exactly how and when things will unfold, and I don’t think anyone truly knows. Cultivating more willful positivity meanwhile, seeking to do the next right things that I can. I do have some control over that.

Cue Philippulus the Prophet.

A Renaissance Within

And some delightful paradoxes

There’s a wonderful quote, attributed to Henry J. Kaiser –

“When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.”

I don’t know in what context the famous industrialist said that, but I generally like the advice. I also can’t completely follow it.

Someone else said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Seems that’s been attributed to a number of notables, its origin unclear.

I ponder these quotes as I find they present certain paradoxes. Artists have to say something about their art, usually, even if it’s minimal. “Here’s a song I wrote last week,” actually gives an audience a lot of context. From that we know we’re going to hear a new song, and an original song, by the singer. So naturally we then perceive it differently than we might if the singer simply started in playing the song cold.

Then you have artist statements, which can present a resounding rejection of Mr. Kaiser’s advice, as illustrated by one of my favorite interweb properties, the Instant Artist Statement Bollocks Generator. (Hours of fun, that!)

And I can see dancing about architecture. Surely, why not? Dance about anything, I dance about frogs. I will swim about poetry this morning.

This last year or two, or four or five – the hazy continuum of societal madness we surf, trying not to lose our own minds – I’ve been on a prolific creative roll as a songwriter and home record producer. As I’ve mentioned before, part of it is therapy, for lack of a better word, processing it all, and trying to keep my head and heart right. And I have become quite free with my words – free associating, as they call it in Therapylandia – trusting instinct with curiosity to learn what’s going on between my ears.

In the course of these adventures, I started calling some of my songs Beet Poetry, in an obvious nod to bongos and the Beat Generation, and vegetables.

One of my favorites from this batch is Me And The Little This Is Fine Fire Doggie

Really fine therapy, that was, and I’ve been grateful to learn from some friends that it provided them too with some soothing medicine.

So looking back on recent years, I’ve made more new original song recordings than I ever expected or planned to. Paradoxes upon paradoxes, these interesting times provide a wealth of inspiration, though I would prefer a stable, rational society. Travel and friends and work and family and conversations and births and deaths all in, I seem to be inspired generally, these days. And I have this new song I’ll publish this weekend, which is a celebration of all of that.

There’s another quote I remember from childhood, “The world is as you see it.” It’s from a famous Indian guru, whose name escapes me, though I’m pretty sure the idea has been passed down for millennia. It’s another imperfect but useful thought, and I work with it. Since we are each a perceiver of the world, the world exists within each of us, and therefor how we perceive it is how it is. And extending from that, those around us may tend to pick up our vibes and see things similarly — I mean, if you’re around people who are miserable, that can tend to rub off, and same if you’re around happy healthy creative joyful generous people. So a gift we can offer others is to try and be well and happy ourselves.

The Vogons, brilliant invention of Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, are not happy beings. They are miserable, and they would prefer it if you are as well. I liked it best when they were safely ensconced in that hilarious work of fiction, but somehow, apparently, they have leaped out of the book and were put in charge of our federal government. This too shall actually pass, and I address the matter directly, in my new song!

Let us dance about architecture and eels, celebrating life, the universe and everything, standing on the desks, my Captains, and willing a Renaissance to be.

Yours fondly,

Eric Din
Berkeley Cat Records

reposted from my Substack

Reblogging – On The Great Musical Rabbit Hole That Is “Pandora Picks”

One of the highlights in my time working at Pandora has been contributing to and enjoying the monthly Pandora Picks playlists. These are curated by Eric Shea, with single-song selections from some of our fellow Pandora music-heads. We listen to a lot of music here of course, and since we each know and love different sets of genres, the Pandora Picks playlists tend to be very eclectic. You’ll have a classic jazz piece next to an experimental metal track, followed by an underground hip-hop gem, and so on. I have found these playlists to be music-discovery treasure troves, along with the engaging and informative spoken intros from the pandas who picked ’em. I haven’t missed one opportunity to contribute a pick since I joined the team here, and I look forward to it each month.

Read on and listen forth!->

https://community.pandora.com/t5/Creators-Blog/On-The-Great-Musical-Rabbit-Hole-That-Is-quot-Pandora-Picks-quot/ba-p/191493

The Many Moods Of Din

Caturday dawn musings

“Too many notes!” goes the famous line in Amadeus, Miloš Forman’s classic Mozart biopic. How many notes? I love that scene and may watch it again soon, my goodness, that was 1984? Time does fly. Of course, the depiction of Salieri is unfair and probably very wrong, but hey, movies gonna movie.

How many notes? How many words? Ah, I know! However many the composer wants there to be. I’m no Mozart but I have been a prolific composer of late, and I enjoy it. That’s the first dimension of success, for an artist, I believe, and it is one that is easily overshadowed by the soul-destroying horrors of late-stage fuckery. Does your work get “Likes?” Do people buy it? Are you wearing expensive gear on Instaderp to make your friends and rivals jealous, all this rot. It’ll give you boils.

I love the song Hot Mess, by girli. Like many a brilliant young artist before her, she declares and takes control of her own art and life. I play that song to get moving in the morning sometimes, as it inspires me a certain way. Her live presence is also fantastic, as I have mentioned before in these very pages.

Pages. Pages and pages I used to write, during my protracted bout of the dreaded Writer’s Block. Wait, I wrote, then? What about the Block? Well, that’s the fun of Writer’s Block, campers, it can take many forms. I tried to write. This is not the same thing as writing. Not to flog the tedious but yeah, I wrote, in my teens, fluently. By the time I was 22, I was trying to write. The world had caught up with me, terrible facts of adulting, with nothing making the grand simple sense that it did when I was 17.

Eventually, I learned to write again. And writing is SO much more fun, than trying to.

What brings this up? Oh my, I have ONE more BOX worth of old notebooks from that blocky period, having gone through four already, slowly but surely when I find time, to see if there’s anything in there I want to keep rather than scrap the whole pile. I may tackle it this weekend or next. I am reminded of Spalding Gray’s Monster In A Box, though his meaning was not exactly the same. For me it’s page after page of me trying to understand, which, took the form of trying to write.

This song I wrote Monday, Just Waiting For The Rain, is very short, practically a jingle. It actually got shorter as I worked on it, as the point was pretty simple. It’s a prayer for rain, in context of current events and all that means. There’s no musical bridge, no instrumental lead part, just a strummy, folky hi and bye. Quite unlike much of my material, which can be very wordy and elaborate indeed. Let the song lead, I say, that’s my method, that’s the fun, for me! The song will tell you how many notes.

Glad it’s Caturday, gonna enjoy some maintenance on ye olde studio office home cattery, do the laundry and such, chop wood, carry water. And I suppose I’ll look at the contents of the “monster” box, now that it’s on my mind.

Letters To A Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. Nancy Hess gave me a copy when I was 25 or so, and it was a significant gift. I recommend the book generally, as it is a fun read, and also specifically, if you or a friend may be wrestling with the ol’ Block.

What moods might motivate me to write again? I do not know! But I feel like a kid on Easter wondering what shiny colored surprises await behind the next hedge. And I enjoy, finally, my complete uncertainty as to how others may perceive the ones I’ve found before. If I get an idea that I like, then once I commit to it, I just try to get out of its way and let it come to life. This can happen quickly and easily, or it can involve considerable effort. Either way fine with me. I like my song journal, now. In 2015, I didn’t. I felt it was woefully incomplete. Now, it feels current.

Ten years since my dad passed, Sept. 25, 2015. A few days after that, I thought, hmm, ya know, I don’t have forever to do this. So I started producing my own material. And all of this happened:

https://ericdin.bandcamp.com/

Many moods indeed.

I don’t use generative Ai for any creative work – writing, images, music, just none, ever, for reasons having to do with The Very Meaning Of Life. But, I don’t judge anyone for trying that stuff, hell, it’s their business, not mine, and after all I get all kinds of writing assistance the gent in this photo. To each and all their own,

Carpe Diem,

Din

Originally posted here

More Sensible Comments From The Weird Dream Olympics

Waking up from afternoon naps is weirder during times of mounting catastrophic societal failure. We established this earlier, in the scientifically accurate Pogo Dancing In My Sleep, as detailed here.

Today, I once again participated in the Weird Dream Olympics after lunch, with a fairly nostalgic and realistic episode.  I was discussing an upcoming UpTones performance (this is not a thing) with a promoter and someone who was our actual manager during some of the actual times, and we needed to pick another band to play on the bill. Someone asked if we should ask Translator and I said sure, even though I didn’t know if they were still active, in my dream, or in waking life.  Then there was a thing, in this dream, where we started rehearsing our set, and at a point, I realized I had written a set list earlier and forgot to make copies, and then, things turned odd as dreams do.  Giraffes complained the bass wasn’t loud enough and requested peppermint. It seemed reasonable to me, and then, waking up, to daylight, as happens in naps, I had the odd “what time is it” and “what’s the  deal” and “oh there isn’t a gig and giraffes plus Translator” moment.

OK.

And was reminded again of my very recent uproarious outbelt (I just made that up – outburst + belting = outbelt, carry on), I Promise Not To Drunk Text Bobby About Getting The Band Back Together. A missive so verbose and riotous that even the title was too long for part of BMI’s song registration interface. Success.

Artwork for this is in progress, and in meantime, the photo of me observing a flagrant violation of any drink James Bond would have, will hold the post valiantly.

We hope your day is grand, and if you attend the Weird Dream Olympics, you win medals.

This Worldly World launches into.. This Worldly World!

AND in the spirit of completion, on this lovely foggy morning, I just uploaded my This Worldly World album to the streaming services of the worldly world. It’ll land in said places in the next few days and then you can play it in your Pandora and Spotifys and Apples and Oranges. OK, no oranges but DEEZERs, yes Deezers! Gesundheit.

The pieces we were waiting for, before taking this momentous leap, were some voice memos from a few of our pals, who dutifully chimed in on “Whoops, this is the wrong future,” for the fade-out on track 14! The finale, if you will. Took me a minute to mix that all to my liking, and I enjoy the result, and hope y’all might as well.

The whole album will also remain in perpetuity, apocalypses notwithstanding, at our beloved Bandcamp! At which, it happens to be Bandcamp Friday. Bandcamp is not a streaming service, it is a different thing in this worldly world.

There it is ^ ! Not terribly hard to find.

I decided a little while ago, after MUCH contemplation and consternation, to release Berkeley Cat Records’ records to ALL of the streaming outlets, AND Bandcamp. There are some good arguments for NOT doing it this way, and argue with myself I did, but this is my conclusion, and I doubt I’ll change my mind on the subject.

Can I share this exciting moment with you? I do get a thrill out of this..

fly, my pretties

That’s the last step in the Distrokid interface, after the songs are written, recorded, mixed and mastered, puzzled and pawed at, played with and pondered, the great heave-ho to send them up from this bedroom producer’s desk into the streaming wilds. I LOVE some aspects of The Future! Heck, we talk on video like freakin’ Star Trek with friends a thousand miles away, there’s just so much cool about our present day. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens, but did he have ANY FREAKING IDEA what was coming?! I cannot know.

Near the end of my song, Dystopian Hot Mess, I sing, “..And baby we’re so blessed, if we only knew it.” This album is informed by everything that’s happening, good and bad, crazy and sane, the worldly world through my often astonished eyes. I hope it gives you some laughs and smiles along your journey.

And off I go, for a little river adventure with my esteemed colleague and UpTones fellow, The Rev. Paul Jackson! Who knows, maybe we’ll come up with a tune? It’s been known to happen.

Carpe Diem,

Din

The Brain Worms, The Brain Worms

Watching this morning’s Democracy Now, well worth a listen if you can stomach it. Absurdities pile upon horrors and one thing that just cracked me up is the title, “The Honorable,” ahead of RFK Jr.’s name. He’s a tragic mess and in some dreadful way, the perfect face and voice of the demise of all that is right and good, with his warped flesh, destroyed voice, and utterly ridiculous and homicidal positions. “The Honorable” and a horse’s ass, there’s no honor near or about him, whatever is honorable in this world, he is other things, that’s a punch line, “The Honorable” label sitting there in front of him as he testifies at the remains of our legislature. Fun times.

I wont post a photo of him, we can’t have that here, one has standards. I will share this amusing bit from Elle Cordova:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ilry6T71hUA?si=tcsp9HA-e9wRx412

What will be, after all this? What will be.

Funs and Thank Yous

Good mornings and Happy Fridays

I appreciate the “This is the wrong future” voice memos a few of y’all have sent in! This weekend I’ll mix the rest of ‘em in and make a final mix of

Meanwhile, here’s an amusing.. amusement, from our beloved Bandcamp:

What you need to know about evolving global tariff policies

It’s.. a

!!

But hey, a lot of people are saying..

Gosh darn it.

I miiiiiight do one other more remix before releasing this album to the streaming wilds. Possibly maybe

since the bass tone is a little bunchy clunky, and I haven’t yet determined if I think that’s a feature or a flaw.

I DEFINITELY support the California redistricting measure and hope you will too. It’s awful that it comes to this, but come to this it has.

Oh, speaking of remixes, I mentioned a while ago that I made some minor remixes of some of these songs, for this album, after releasing the initial mixes as singles. A fun bit: Those minor remixes really helped the tracks, to my ear. The title track in particular, This Worldly World, really benefited from this extra attention. And, I realized another thing about that song, which continues to reveal itself to me, in its journal-like way: The whole song is a tribute to my friend and career counselor Luke, not just the last verse. I mean, I think, as songs do, it can mean anything to anyone, and I hesitate to spell out its meaning to me, but for this one, I will. The first verse:

If I could just see round the bend
Or someone tell me how it ends
I wonder what-ifs leading to and from that day
Could it have gone another way?
I honestly can’t say

Could be about any pivotal day, right? When a fateful decision was made, or a dreadful accident happened, or an election went terribly wrong, even. Right? Anything. And let that meaning be open. But what it was, when I finished that song, was Luke’s suicide. It’s hard for me to even write that word. It remains impossible for me to fully grasp. Luke was infinitely successful, and brilliant, and widely loved. I’ll speak of him from time to time as I unpack all this and move along.

Shannon Wheeler drew the lovely cover artwork for my original single of This Worldly World, and on seeing it, I thought, that’s also an album cover. So, some months later, it is. Much love to you and yours,

Eric