Category: Blog

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

What IF?…

Creativity is the act of not stopping yourself from creating

..was my thought as I woke up this morning. I haven’t been stopping myself lately, no siree. Random funbits –

I just added the lyrics to Bennie Got A Boat on the Bandcamp page. I had to type them out, because my original copy is long gone – perhaps eaten by seals or dolphins. In any case, there they are! Where lies the land to which the ship will go? We don’t know, Petunia.

Dears!  I am locked out of Facebook. It’s amusing because I have tried to quit FB a number of times, and always returned to the well before very long because, well, a bunch of my friends and fam and fans and colleagues and cats and doggies are there, so.. Well I am glad I posted about my latest album there before being summarily banished by the F-Brainz. Oddly they didn’t say I did anything wrong, just that they can’t confirm my identity. So I’m going through their hoops to retrieve my profile there, and yet, at the same time, I don’t miss the “place” and life seems less hectic without it. Paradoxes pile on, these days, don’t they?

Hopefully more of my pals will subscribe to the Berkeley Cat Records mewsletter and podcats (sic and sic) and engage with me that way, oh, and Bluesky, I’m there too – seems there are some “signs of life” there, as my dad would say.

Trivia question!  For my single It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer, I made a loop from part of the drum tracks on one of my ska songs! Which song was it? A hint: I sped the track up a bit. Another hint: The original tracks were recorded by Thomas White, founding drummer in The UpTones. One more hint: The original source track is on Poppin’ the Ska.  “Now Safe To..” was a fun experiment, and I wasn’t at all sure how it would go, but I am pleased with the result. Unusual for me, it’s just drums and vocals – nothing else on the track. Spoken/rapped as such, yet when I sing a melody near the end, on these lines –

The lunatics have taken over Main Street
And we’re hiding in the asylum
Listen to the bells fall down from the tower
Corruption is just Tuesday now
As it ever was

– the implied chord changes seem very apparent to me, just from the single vocal and drum tones. It was tempting for a minute to add those chords on guitar or keyboard, but I rejected the notion. I really like the sound just raw like that. It matches the feeling of the text. So I mixed it as-is, it was a quickie! Gosh, one of the things I’ve learned in this journey of producing my own records is that knowing when to stop working on a thing, is crucial. Perfectionism can be a creativity-killer, and yet, one strives for excellence by one’s own standards, right? So one breathes in and out and tries to follow as a thing unfolds, and be aware of the moment. I’ve gotten better, at this, I’m happy to say. Taking chances, going for it, trying things I’m not sure of, to find out.. What if..? ..is part of the joy of life for me. Always was, but, safe to say I sometimes let things stop me more easily, in the past. My own doubts, or others’ opinions, or my perceptions or worries about what people might think.. These all can derail the creativity train. Mine’s been roaring along, lately, and it’s fun.

Wow, it’s December the 31st.  I recorded Rabbitus Maximus on January the first of this year, and that was a packed 364 days and bears oh my, was it not? The amazing human story plays out, we’re in it, and we get to choose, to a large extent, our attitudes and behaviors. I say these obvious points out loud, to remind myself.

Chuckle. I’m going to quote a song from RUSH now, chilluns, take cover.

You won’t get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes

Neil Peart at his finest, IMO. Full context here.

That song had a big impact on me when I was 13 or 14, discovering prog rock and metal. I dove headlong into RUSH, YES, and pretty much anything with dragons and odd time signatures that I could find. Those roads led to the Dixie Dregs, for me, and my all-time greatest guitar hero, Steve Morse. I gained a lot of creative courage from them. They just did whatever they wanted to, for most of their run. They experimented. And what is Experimental Music?  One experiments! And what happens when one experiments? Well, we don’t know. Until an experiment is run, you may predict the outcome, but you can’t be sure of it. And indeed, the Dregs had an album, called What if

Looking back as we enter the last year of the first quarter of the first century of the millenium, I’m glad I tried some things. Went on creative limbs to see which would carry my weight or bend or break, to find out, what if. I’m humbly grateful that my muse, for lack of a better term, perked up and responded with marvelous surprises, over and over, each time so differently. I expect I will ask her some more questions as the days proceed.

Wishing a huge HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! And a great big huge THANK YOU for your pre-orders for Poppin’ the Ska! It really makes my day and I appreciate it.

Try some things. Enjoy the discoveries. Ignore the voice that says you can’t.

 

Orwell said there might be trouble

My songs definitely turn out to be a sort of journal, for me. I imagine they mean different things to anyone who hears them, like any song; The final product is in the mind of the listener, and no two people hear a thing quite the same way, I think.

1983, I wrote one morning with a laugh since as the song says, I live in 1983. To a certain extent it’s true. My musical tastes and songwriting vocabulary were pretty complete by the time I was 18, and I haven’t changed much, fundamentally, since then. I heard many years ago that most people spend the rest of their lives listening to the records they liked in their youth, and I thought, oh that’s awful, I don’t want to be that guy! Joke’s on me, I’m that guy. Somewhat. I mean, I hear a lot of new music in my creative and professional lives, but what comes out of me, the music I spontaneously create sometimes, seems largely rooted in my teenage brain.

“Juliet in black jeans” is an actual person, Juliet Harris, high school classmate, fellow rocker and one of the most original and stunning rock star individuals I ever had the pleasure to know. She died earlier this year, and I attended a memorial for her in Live Oak Park, organized in part by our mutual dear friend Peter Montgomery. I’m playing a short acoustic set at a birthday party for Peter this January 11, I’ll share the flier below, and I figure I’ll include 1983 in my caterwaulings.

“Never going one more year, Orwell said there might be trouble” cracked me up when I wrote it, and wow, what does it mean now? Too much, I think, I can’t quite fathom it. What have people done? They know not, methinks.

I have abandoned mainstream news sources (if mainstream even means anything anymore), I just don’t need to follow the play-by-play at this time. I know the big headlines and that’s enough. I had this sense, a few weeks ago, an idea, that the smallest pieces of local news are just as significant if not more so, than the hideous firehose of idiot shit we are asked to consume. A cat, napping blissfully in the sun of a bookstore window, matters more to me. Imagining the cat’s experience, or that of a dog gleefully playing as they do, gives me joy. I read Heather Cox Richardson every few days, and occasionally Dan Rather and a few others. The comedic satire of Jon Stewart and friends doesn’t connect with me at the moment, much as I love them, for reality has become satire again. People, a great many people, chose absurdity in its ugliest form, whereas I reject it. To some degree the world is as one sees it, and we do choose what we look at and listen to. I value my minutes in this life and will selfishly curate them. Somehow wrestling with these principles led me to write and record this:

And then somehow, without any wrestling at all, this song Donkeyfish emerged, and it turns out to be one of my own favorites of my work from this year, or maybe ever. It just burst forth, I had the idea and recorded each part once and bam, it was done before I knew it. I do labor hard on some songs, sometimes, and in some funny way I think my inner muse rewards me for those efforts by just handing me one, sometimes.

After this jaunt, I googled “Donkeyfish,” of course, and lo and behold, there is a Donkey Fish! Dermatolepis inermis. Also called the marbled grouper, mutton hamlet, rockhind, or sicklefish grouper. That’s a lot of names for a fish, or a donkey.

This many-splendored planet. I am glad to visit.

A Journal Entry Of Sorts

I do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Some have called this the definition of insanity but I prefer to see it as dedication.

Now then, making records. Berkeley Cat Records has a slogan – a tag line, if you will –

We’re from Berkeley. We are cats. We make records.

And it’s… TRUE!!

By gosh we do this.

I have some webby updatings to do, on this and a few other webbysites.  To bring my archive up-to-date. Been rather prolific, this year, and I’m pleased with my output. Each track is unique and different, so in this regard I guess I lied earlier. I do the same thing, that is, I get up (early, wow, very early these days) and make Peet’s coffee (various blends, current fave is Big Bang, no they don’t pay me to say that, it’s a Berkeley thing), and some days, some mornings, the light bulb over me head says, hey, here’s a track or a song idea! And I go there. Expecting what? Why, Petunia, I just don’t know.

Trying times, trying times, what a cliché that becomes. 2024, what the FUCK?! OK damn, my great friend and confidante, my career counselor and living Buddha Garden rock star beautiful human being Luke Kreinberg, died by suicide earlier in the year. It hardly feels real and if I start in talking about it I’ll write a novel, so let’s call that a headline. Grief sets in long and slow as comprehension of this slowly forms in my dumbfounded and stunned heart and mind.

Politics, another headline, shall we?   Biden, the drama, then Kamala, the campaign! The energy, the enthusiasm, the embrace of good values, decency and the rule of law, the rejection of all that is horrible, and then.. The most staggering debacle. It tests my optimism.

Optimism. I have lived most of my life with an intentional, deliberate optimism. Even in difficult times, in my personal life or career or through difficult events in the world around me I have chosen through and through to be optimistic. Part of it is calculated. I’ve found that pessimism can lead to the expected (bad) results and optimism can seem to help to lead to good outcomes. You get the result you imagine, to some degree. It’s not magic or hocus pocus, I think the current popular word for it is intention, setting your intention.

This year, yeah, it’s been tested a bit, this willful optimism of mine.  And becoming aware of that, becoming conscious of this inner struggle, certainly informed some of my songwriting and creative efforts.

A month after Luke’s passing, I went to see a psychotherapist. Private, expensive, several sessions, somewhat helpful. Smart fellow, wise and doubtlessly expert in his field. Younger than me, by at least ten years. After the 3rd visit I thanked him and canceled. You know, making records costs a bit, too. And I found, that the process involved in telling this gentleman, this professional, my stories and trying to understand myself a little better, is not wholly different from my process in writing and recording my own songs. Things are revealed, things I like and sometimes things that surprise or even disappoint me. In short it helps me work on myself, to hopefully become a better person. Well, funny thing – I even at one point some months ago said I was done making records for a while. Ha! That didn’t fly, so, well, I decided I can afford one or the other – record-making or therapy.

To become a better person. Now that is a worthy goal. And it’s one worth saying out loud at this time in our world, I believe.  Because there seems to be, among our fellow man, an embrace of values which are indecent. And I chose every word in that sentence. Our fellow man. Yes, also in women and in humankind more generally, but in men, I speak of men, men who have lost their sense of honor. Who have somehow been influenced, or brainwashed, if you prefer, to celebrate and reward simply the worst possible traits men can have. That is a mistake, and a dire one, and I doubt any good will come of it.

Meanwhile nature bats last, and she’s at bat. Instead of focusing our considerable human genius on dealing with the climate crisis intelligently, with the sort of organized focus which landed men on the moon, the human race is instead fighting wars over territory, power, religion, oil, water and vengeance, dumping more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before.

So how’s my willful optimism doing? Well, surprisingly ok. Because after all, it is willful.  What am I doing, with my time? Well, continuing to make art, for one thing. NOT making “art” with generative AI (I laugh out loud as I write this), and striving to be the best version I can imagine of myself. And I know, I know without doubt, that my friends and colleagues, and untold millions of good people whom I don’t know personally, are similarly striving. And THAT realization changes my optimism from willful, to easy and natural.

Our capacity for self-invention is considerable. And that’s some good news.

A Week Ago And Only Once

HERE is a scan of the set list I played at Ivy Room last Sunday. Blogging it as a memento, as it was a fun slice of life. Funny detail? I’ve started to use non-cursive print lately, along with my usual BLOCK LETTERS. With a pen, mind you, these ancient instruments.

I’m scheduled to play a set for Peter Montgomery’s 60th birthday party, at Gilman, in January, with a luminous cast of luminaries. Here’s the flier for that, as created by Peter himself:

And good morning

Busy Busy Having Fun

Hey, I’m doing a solo set opening for Psycotic Pineapple! Deets:

I released a Schlager! It’s here:

And I’ve been keeping up somewhat on my mewsletter, which I invite you to follow here: https://berkeleycatrecords.substack.com/

I bought the postcard stamps for my 200 get out the vote postcards via TurnoutPac, yesterday, and that was rather thrilling, actually 🙂 What are you doing to ensure a Blue Wave?  Let’s get it, y’all!  That’s all, I gots work to do, Happy Caturday <3

Nerd-posting about my Rebottle of Baby (x23) I Love You

I make records that I want to hear. Or at least, that’s the ambition. As things go, sometimes I do revisit a track and remix (rebottle!) it. This one came up recently a few different ways, and I decided to spend a little time fine-tuning the mix and remastering it.

Nerdly notes!

The basic track was done “live” in Mike Stevens’ Lost Monkey Studio, during the October 2017 firestorms.  Many of my friends and fam had to evacuate, and some of them lost their homes.  In the midst of that, I composed and recorded this song. There was a third verse, but it seemed unnecessary on reflection, so I cut it before including the song on my CONTENT album.  Just last week I remixed it, and bounced an instrumental mix.

We didn’t use a click-track (metronome) when we tracked the basics.  Just me and Mikey, him on a drum kit, me on acoustic guitar.  I don’t sniff snobbishly at click-tracks, in fact I use them often. But when it’s possible to make a recording without one, I opt for that. Because it’s cool to let the tempo breathe, for some songs.  This one’s pretty steady (Mike is a GREAT drummer), and the tempo does shift subtly in places.  As intended. It’s rock n’ roll, baby.

The first overdub, Mikey did right after we cut the basic. He played tambourine, and he nailed it, so beautifully.  Thing is, a tambourine part is hard to do. Then it’s hard to place the tambo in the mix. Tambourines notoriously sound either too loud or too quiet, in a mix. Now I got it right where I want it.

Next, I played a guitar solo.  8 bars.  I have nerded often about my FAVORITE 8-bar rock guitar solo, Mick Ronson in the original Ian Hunter recording of Once Bitten, Twice Shy.  I don’t pretend to have reached such heights.   But my solo in this track is one of my favorite 8-bar pentatonic scale outbursts.   I played my trusty “Oates” Tele-beast, which I use on pretty much all of my recordings. We tossed it through Mike’s vintage Fender Champ, dimed out. “Dimed” means everything’s on 10.  Not that there are a lot of knobs, on an old Champ.  Volume and tone controls on 10.  Everything the amp can put out.  It sounds, to use the appropriate term, Gnarly. We wanted gnarls. Oh did we get them.  I added some tape-echo and light compression to finish.

Thankfully, MOST of my releases don’t call me to remix/rebottle. I’ll probably never touch I Can See It Now again, or Am I Not Alien?, or most of the others I’ve made since I started this solo adventure. But I’ll do it when I feel inspired to.

Last nerd-note – I’m confident in mastering my own tracks, now. This is new. For many of my songs, I have turned to some great mastering engineers.  They did great work.  You can find their names in the credits for my releases in Bandcamp, if you are curious. I learned much from each of them, and finally figured out a way to do this step myself.

Mastering is funny.  Anyone who has made records probably knows, it can take your track and finalize it gorgeously, so you go “Wow! It sounds like a record now!” Or, alternately, it can wreck the whole thing, leaving you sad and howling, “Whaaaat happened to our record?!”  So you learn by doing.

I wanted to learn this final step, and I did. THANKS to all the aforementioned mastering engineers and producers whom I have had the privilege to work with. I’m NOT going to master other folks’ records. I don’t want that responsibility, and I have no ambition to be in that field, which is populated with geniuses.  But I DO know what I want my records to sound like. Each one different; Each song follows its own rules. And I’m glad to have finally demystified this step, for myself.  Baby 🙂

Live in Bandcamp now, goes live in all the streaming services July 31. Pre-save in Spotify or Apple Music if you do that sort of thing.

All love,

Eric

Artwork by Shannon Wheeler

Some musical highlights from my recent adventures

I returned to Lübeck sooner than I had originally expected to, for more family and friend gatherings, two years after my first visit there as an adult. Lübeck is my mom’s hometown, and it feels like a second home to me now.  My parents met there in early 1960, and I’ll share more about that later.  For this morning, I want to recall a few great musical moments from the trip, while they are fresh in my mind.

1. Chorkonzert des Rundfunkjugendchores Wernigerode at the Marienkirche.

Also known as the Church of St. Marien, the Marienkirche, Lübeck is one of the tallest and grandest brick gothic cathedrals in Europe.  It took centuries to build, and decades to rebuild after WW2.  Maintenance on such a structure is ongoing, actually – it’s sort of always being built and revisioned, as it is utilized and explored and enjoyed by many.  The main hall is utterly vast.  Its arches and towering stained glass and two mighty pipe organs – plus the massive brick and other surfaces – all combine to create a cavernous reverb which sweetly amplifies and  lengthens even the slightest sound of a footstep, a voice, a cough, or anything else.  It’s one of the most beautiful long reverbs I have ever heard, and this makes the space ideal for certain kinds of music: Pipe organ of course, and church choir.

This amazing young group..

Rundfunk-Jugendchor Wernigerode

..happened to perform at Marienkirche while we were in town, to our fantastic luck.   One of the top youth choirs in Europe, their performance was elevating.  I try to think of the right superlative and yes, elevating – uplifting, in the truest sense.  The group is top-level pro, yet all teenage kids, so one hears not only their finely rehearsed ensemble work and impeccably trained voices, but also the joy of discovery in every moment – their exhilaration at hearing the sound they create together.  It was medicine for the soul, to watch and hear them in this completely organic, acoustic setting – voices and space, absent a digital layer or anything artificial at all.  I was struck by how rarely I hear anything like that in my daily life these days.  Humbled and inspired, I was revitalized, and moved to joyous tears.

So that happened.   There was also a marvelous solo organist in the program, playing the giant pipe organ in between the choir’s sets, all of this amplified and extended by the aforementioned glorious and massive reverb.  You can read the programme here for details about the composers and pieces.

Here’s the one shot I naughtily snapped in between the choir’s sets..

..I say “naughtily” because phones (“Handies” as they are called there) are rightly not allowed during the performance.   I did it as quickly and stealthily as I could, and I shall repent appropriately.  Great shot, tho, innit? 🙂

The gent on the right is of course their conductor, and his interaction with the choir was exciting to watch as was the comeraderie of the singers with each other.  By the last set, their smiles were irrepressible as the energy and sound and music soared, and the audience and singers knew they were sharing a unique and unforgettable moment.  Faith in humanity restored, and, I suppose, that’s why one might visit a church.

2. WIENER KAMMERORCHESTER / SEBASTIAN KNAUER
»ÜberBach« – works by Arash Safaian, J.S. Bach, Tschaikowsky, Grieg

This epic concert took place at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.  Tickets gifted by a lifelong friend of my mom’s, we traveled with them and my aunt by train and arrived at this stunning building overlooking the harbor.  The architecture is a concert in itself, here’s a slice from their website –

I have a hard time conceiving how this monument was dreamed up, much less designed and constructed.  You enter and step onto what might be the world’s longest escalator, and it’s not a straight angle – as you see in the pic, the escalator has a gentle and asymmetric curve, which feels strangely soothing as you slowly ascend.  Multiple staircases later we were in the main concert hall – here’s a snap I took while seats were filling up –


It’s like that on all sides.  The stage is centered with the audience all around it, and much unlike the earlier-mentioned cathedral, this hall was impeccably designed not to add extensive reverb.  Supposedly the sound is magnificent in every section, and it certainly was in ours.  The room sounded much smaller than it is – more like a finely tuned recording studio than a normal concert hall.  All the instruments felt nearby, and at times I’m pretty sure I could hear the musicians breathing.

The programme was fascinating and fun.   Hamburg native pianist Sebastian Knauer is the sort of seemingly effortless virtuoso I find so fun to watch, and his duets with Danish vibraphonist Morten Friis were unexpected and thrilling.  Vibraphone on a Bach piece?  Well, why not!

Most remarkable for me was the sound of the string ensemble.  This is where the unusual acoustics of the room really sang.  Concert master Anna Morgoulets has a star presence of her own, and her tone (we guitar nerds have to nerd out about “tone”) – her tone was otherworldly, very much like a voice, and her timing and technique.. I feel silly trying to even describe it.  She’s amazing.

So, that also happened!

3. Freddy Quinn’s 1962 hit, Junge, komm bald wieder

This song was a favorite of a very dear uncle of mine who recently passed.  I had never heard it before this trip – at a memorial service for him, which I attended along with members of my extended family.  Everyone was moved, and clearly many recognized the song from their youth.  It’s a sailor’s song, simply calling a son to come home soon, as countless sailors’ moms have done through the ages.  My uncle and aunt, and my mom and dad, all emigrated from Germany to the Americas during the early 1960s, while Junge, komm bald wieder was a hit, and I quickly understood the song’s special place in all of their hearts.

Here it is on Pandora, and I’m sure you can find it on other services as well.

As for me, I had thought about renting a guitar for my three week stay there, but opted out as the days were packed with travel and fun activities.  I have my mom and cousins and uncles and aunts to thank for that, and for their warm hospitality to this Junge aus California.  I feel I know them all better after this journey, and as such, have become more acquainted with myself.  I did take some audio notes on the ol’ iPhone Handy!  Have a few song ideas percolating, and one of them is straight-up Schlager.  I love me some Schlager, and now that I have a chorus and song concept, I’ll just need to find a little free time to bang it out, hopefully within the next few weeks.

Oh!

4. This song – I can say this out loud now, cos I found it amusing, though a tiny bit frightening.  Why did I choose to write and record and release a song with the opening line, “I jumped out of a plane,” like, minutes before getting on a plane?  Coincidence, or my perverse unconscious mischievous process?  I don’t know.  Songs happen to me, you see, sometimes that’s the best way to describe it.  I Changed My Mind is part of this journey, in fact it was still earworming me as we embarked at SFO.  I had also watched the recent harrowing documentary about Boeing’s horrific demise into stupid greed and treachery, just a few weeks ago, so a small bit of my mind was thinking, “OK, this is it, then!”  But thankfully, I live to sing another day.

With gratitude and love, don’t jump out of any planes, and komm bald wieder nach Haus.

In Defense Of Cold Pizza In The Candy House

I have an affection for cold pizza that must be attributable to favorable memories. Pizza is band food, college food, party food, food young people enjoy together with or without beers.  After the gig or party or session or thing, if one had the sense to close the box, 12 or 18 hours later, at room temperature, with or without a hangover, the cold pizza can be a great blessing. You’re ready for a bite, you open the box, Eureka, two slices remain, it’s just you and the room and your itinerary and a quick lunch or 3AM snack and off you go.  Peppers, garlic, cheese, tomato sauce, a crust which New Yorkers scoff at but will eat under the circumstances, maybe some pepperoni or sausage and you’re hungry – you’ve worked or gigged or partied or all of these, and this, this is the most welcome deliciousness in all of culinary anything in the right moment.

Ordering books, while savoring cold pizza from last night’s in-hotel dinner from Pizzeria San Marco in Lübeck.  Ordered The Candy House by Jennifer Egan.  Several of my friends have mentioned this novel to me since she apparently mentions The UpTones in the story, and said friends recommend the book highly, and only now am I getting around to it.  Why? Reading glasses.  I have reading glasses now and.. Well I can read, with them!

Pre-ordered also the new second edition of In Defense Of Ska by Aaron Carnes. I have his 1st edition, found it a wildly fun and informative read, and this obsessed defender of ska has gone and made an expanded edition.  The UpTones are part of that story, and in the course of interviews with Mr. Carnes we became pals and I also reconnected with some other peeps from my distant cold-pizza-gigging past as a result of his efforts and research.

Now equipped with fresh reading glasses yes, I am reading books again, not exclusively reading on my computer as I have done for the last decade or so. Progress. I promise I’ll also read some books that don’t involve the UpTones! And maybe heat the pizza, but no promises there.

Finishing an amazing vaca with adventures with friends and family, and I’ll share more about this when I get home, including a bunch of photos.

Guten Abend, and bon appétit