Category: Blog

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

Crafting Craft Music in This Worldly World

Greetings fellow travelers.

One of my favorite moments on my new album This Worldly World
is the outro on Tropical Snow. That whole piece flowed out of me in a fun process of observing, really. I listened and let my hands do what was asked of them by the music as it emerged. Took a few short hours and was very complete, and the ending part was a delicious surprise.

Sometimes, sometimes and not always but sometimes for me, creating original music is easy and fun and satisfying. It’s almost always fun and satisfying in some unique ways, but not always so easy. Tropical Snow was all of these, and when I hear it, I hear a calm and peaceful place in myself which I’m glad exists, and that I can visit sometimes.

A nerdly guitar note – I used my Joe Meek VCQ3 optical compressor rather heavily on this track, especially near the end. Hard compression can be a really cool guitar effect, but I usually don’t have much use for it. For this, however, it was just the medicine on the lead line near the end, when the song fades into the sunset.

Semi-nerdly related notes – I used, on this album, three main instruments: a Martin acoustic, a Fender B-bass, and my one-off custom Telecaster-ish bit of magic which came to me by luck and circumstance decades ago. For the drum tracks, some of them are me playing hand-percussion at home, others are edited and looped studio tracks from some of the great drummers I’ve worked with in sessions over recent years. The vocals are almost all mine, and I still don’t use autotune for anything. It’s a choice, not one to be on a soapbox about, but a solid choice for me because I like the unique quirks in our human voices, and I do not consider them imperfections at all. I wish less recording artists and producers would squash the “real” out of their human voices, but that’s just me.

As for soapboxes, I will get on mine to say I think Ai-generated music and other Ai-gen content is a Bad Thing That Causes Harm. Caps for emphasis. Especially regarding artistic or creative work, it is antithetical to creativity. It makes me sick and I wish it would go away. There will be examples of gooder (sic) uses of it, but I think in sum it is Bad For The World (more caps, more emphasis). Part of my passionate opinion there comes from my knowledge of the joy and discovery involved in creating (ahem) CRAFT MUSIC! A term which makes me cackle – it came from a colleague of mine in jest – he said that’s what music made “the old way” or words to that effect may eventually be called, like Craft Beer and such. Slow food? Anyway I worry for younger folks who enter a world where this exists, where you can text-prompt a thing to make a thing and there it is and whoop, you’ve done little with your hands, little with your mind, and less with your heart. I hope instead they go to music lessons, practice their scales diligently for hours upon hours, feel the exhilaration of mastering a difficult passage which had once seemed daunting and out of reach, and then play it joyfully with their hands, with their hands. And I’m sure many of them will, and I hope folks encourage it. It does wonders for a body and soul. I guess I wouldn’t harumph so hard about Ai-slop if it were not for the absolutely horrible environmental consequences it brings, at a time when we should be actively and literally saving the earth from doom. This is of course, the kind of thing I rave and rant about in some of my songs.

Well, I hope you enjoy my Craft Music, Slow Food record, made by me mostly, with the help of a few great human friends, and a pair of wonderful cats. Still waiting a few days til I finalize track 14 – which will have a few more voices chiming in at the end, per this fun. Then after that I’ll send it to all the streaming services.

OH! Also, streaming release of Russ Ellis‘ Songs From The Garden album TBA soon, in another post. It’s been available on CD and on Bandcamp since November of 2021, and along with being a personal favorite of mine, it is also Berkeley Cat Records’ biggest seller. It too, was made by human voices and hands! Quite a great bunch of ’em, in fact.

Til next time, Good morning and good luck,

Eric

Berkeley supervises a mix

“I Was Here,” and other motivations

This weekend I’m delighted and surprised by this album I’m finishing, called This Worldly World. It occurred to me a few months ago that the title and artwork for my single of the same name, would work well for a title track and album name. After finishing my most recent outings, Delete And Report Junk, and The Wrong Future, I thought, OK, time to compile and start putting together a running order. This is where the surprise comes in – it flows together beautifully, to my ears, and feels like an intended album. A “concept album,” even, to use a rather “prog rock” term!  Why not?  It’s a concept album, sure. Didn’t plan it that way, but it happened!

All of the songs, even the instrumentals, came out of me like journal entries over the last year or so, with one exception – a remaster of a track I first released in 2020. It fits the concept perfectly so I added it in.

We all cope in various ways, or try to, and for me, creating music and songs which take a satirical or humorous look at the horrors our society is living through, actually really helps me.  It is a kind of therapy, and it costs less than a psychoanalyst! I had one, for a month, a year ago or so, expensive yet worthwhile. At our second session I asked him, “Do you offer advice?” His answer was no, that he hopes to help his clients become their own best advisors. I thought that was a first class answer.  Honest, and immediately helpful. I then told him about my dear departed friend Luke, who was, in the last years of his life, my career counselor. Luke, I went to for advice, and as a career counselor, he offered it. To my great fortune, Luke’s advice was golden. Actionable, wise, self- and life-affirming in ways I can never adequately express my gratitude for. His advice changed the course of my life, infinitely for the better.

After Luke died, I felt so much grief that I decided professional help was needed, hence my seeking out a psychotherapist, specifically for grief counseling. And it helped, it did, yet the question I asked above was key to the whole experience. I wanted some more good advice, and there was none to be had, outside of myself.

The third verse of the title track on this album, is to Luke:

“(You said bring)
My whole self into the building
(So I did)
Not holding back, no I am building
I am so grateful for your memory
Your wisdom give me strength to shine
And I know
This worldly world will carry on, even if we don’t,
This worldly world, all along, forever more”

He was here, he lived, and he made a huge and positive impact on mine and really many others’ lives. At his memorials I met some of his other clients and was struck by how they all expressed similar gratitude, for how he guided and advised them. That’s quite a career, isn’t it? I’ll say plainly: Luke changed the way I look at myself. Made me like myself more, honestly. What price, self-esteem? I got so much more than I bargained for when I asked for career advice. I got that, but I also got ME advice.

My dad died in 2015, so he didn’t get to see all this, my last ten years being among the best I’ve had in my life. I’m sad I didn’t get to share this time with him, but I have a certain faith that spiritually we carry on, and that he’s with me. I’m also glad, in the same breath, that my dad never saw these chapters of dystopia that started, really right after he died.

Paradoxes pile upon paradoxes, and here I’m in a place of happiness in my life and career, a blissfully single crazy cat man making my own records on my own dime and time, while this dystopian hot mess plays out. I enjoy any day that the hills around me aren’t bursting into flames, literally or figuratively. I’m grateful for each day that my friends and family members live, as we all get older, and start to lose our peers.

And I’m here, and my records are here, and these are records, I’m glad to leave here when I am eventually gone. A little recorded legacy. That feels good to me. And while I’m here, I get a thrill out of sharing them, and I think for some folks, the “therapy” is there, in the tracks. A little remedy from the astonishing unspeakable stupidity and madness that plays out. That, I hope.

14 tracks. Loading ’em up into Bandcamp today. When I share the album, I hope you’ll give it a blast on your stereo appliances, and share with your peeps all around this worldly world.

Love and gratitude,

Eric

UPDATE 8-25-2025: Aaaaand, here is the album!

Out of Myself – Songs of Peter Foley – The Hidden Sky and Beyond

An album I have been exploring and greatly enjoying lately is the recently released live recording of some of Peter Foley‘s compositions.

Out of Myself – Songs of Peter Foley (Live) is a labor of love, created by Peter’s family, friends and colleagues, in the time since Peter’s passing. And Peter’s work was also a labor of love. He was an artist utterly committed to his craft and vision.

Peter Foley was a year or two behind me at Berkeley High School, and we became friends at Cazadero Music Camp in the very early 1980s. Even in youth, he radiated positivity. The man was a source of light.

In the mid-’90s, I attended a reading of The Hidden Sky in New York. I went because I knew Peter and I was curious, but I had really no idea what to expect. The music and lyrics were revelations to me. I was completely transported, and I left feeling awestruck and inspired.

I didn’t hear The Hidden Sky again for decades, and when I finally did, in this new recording, it struck me in just the same way.  There’s a wealth of great material on the album, showing Mr. Foley’s great range of influences in and out of pop and musical theater and rock and jazz, and things unique to him.

You can read more about Peter’s journey in this New Yorker article – https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-gifted-composer-gone-too-soon,
learn more about the new album here: https://www.peterfoleymusic.org/,
and check out the beautiful digital album booklet, here.

I bought it on iTunes, and you can also find it on Pandora and other streaming services I’m sure.

The smile, on this record cover, is how I remember him. Thanks to the great efforts of Peter’s wife Kate Chisholm, and a stellar cast of singers and players, Peter Foley’s music can now and forever be discovered and rediscovered by anyone, worldwide. And this is something to celebrate.

Trees Falling, Hearing Them,

Migrating Geese, and, Happy June 1 <3

Occasionally I’ll write something and then revisit to edit it a few times (or more than a few) as I discover exactly what meaning I seek to convey. Or even, simply, understand what it is that I am trying to understand. Writing is discovery, often, I find, and sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not. I joke that songwriting (or any kind of writing) is for me either easy, or impossible. There’s a grain of truth to that. Sometimes my best work happens when I put in very little effort and find myself laughing and smiling as a piece makes itself with the aid of my hands and voice. And as I’ve observed before, I think that may be “The Muse” rewarding me for the other times in which I sweat and toil through dark puzzles in search of a distant beckoning source of possible light. Dramatic? Why yes, Petunia, it can be.

Hi! CaturSunday, had a nice morning walk, saw bunnies (yes rabbits) and some honking geese on their way north. Humbly grateful for this visit to our unique and lovely planet, may we care for her.

I’ve received a few really sweet notes recently, from folks out there who have somehow found and listened to some of the music I’ve written and/or produced, and it really means a lot to me. I just used the word “really” twice in one sentence, and for me, this must mean I really mean it! The ol’ tree falling in the woods metaphor, we artists and writers must deal with it. You put a record out online and at the moment you upload it, untold thousands of other tracks are uploaded to the same platforms, many of them now “generated” by “AI” (Artificial Idiocy? Apocalyptic Imbroglio?), and amid them, also some brilliant, heartfelt works from actual hoomans. So in all that context.. I’m glad our “trees” are heard and appreciated sometimes. Thank you.

What else? On nothing. Here’s our Madison Avenue Man single floating along a nice cool summery river, courtesy of our pals at Distrokid.

All best,

Eric Din
Berkeley Cat Records Chief Tree Forest Listening Officer (CTFLO)

Oh, PS! For clarity and context –

  1. I didn’t write “Madison Avenue” – that’s a cover, you can read about it here, and
  2. The blog post I edited a few times, leading to this train of thought, is here.

Bridges Of Spies, and the Virtues of being Virtuous

There’s a scene in Bridge Of Spies, Spielberg’s Cold War epic, where the lawyer James B. Donovan, played by Tom Hanks, is confronted by a CIA agent. The agent wants Donovan to break attorney client privilege and report on his client, Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, asserting that “We don’t have a rule book here.” Mr. Donovan refuses, replying that the rule book is the one thing that makes us all Americans regardless of our backgrounds or ethnicities. The rule book is the Constitution, Donovan states, before telling the agent to leave him alone to do his job, and walking out.

Jim Donovan as portrayed in this movie is a Good Guy. A Boy Scout. One who follows the rules and does not compromise his morals even when profoundly challenged, threatened, reviled and endangered. He acts courageously and generously against terrible odds, alone. And he emerges victorious, saving people’s lives. He is proven right. We the audience share the journey with him, seeing him, even when in the story, he is seen mainly only by himself. A man of principle. A “standing man,” as Abel names him.

We need people like this Jim Donovan. We should celebrate that sort of character. We should encourage people to behave that way. We should ask it from ourselves. Even if we don’t do it nearly as dramatically as he did, we have opportunities every day to choose to be good. Choose to be virtuous, and generous. Choose to follow the “rule book.” Even while some seek to shred it.

How similar is Tom Hanks / Spielberg’s portrayal to the real James B. Donovan? I don’t know, but certainly some of the headline achievements are accurate. The movie did take license with a number of details, covered in Wikipedia. That bothers me somewhat as it seems unnecessary and a bit irresponsible, but I still love the movie. The acting is superb throughout, the characters unforgettable.

The spy, Abel, played by Mark Rylance, has some of the best lines. I often remind myself of his reply, when asked if he never worries: “Would it help?” It’s a perfect answer. A statement as a question. Real serenity.

Worrying doesn’t help, but it can be motivating, I suppose. To work one’s way out of worrying by taking appropriate action, where possible. But as for things truly out of our hands, worrying is just worrying. Unproductive and unpleasant. Seeing the difference, between things we can change and things we can’t, is an ongoing challenge, isn’t it?

To choose to be good, to oneself and others, seems so basic and simple, and yet it absolutely is a choice. I have haven’t been a perfect “Scout,” but I also have not been a felon. I don’t think any of us get all the way through life without sinning, for lack of a better word. I’m grateful that my sins were not deliberately cruel. That would be hard to live with, as I have an active and loud conscience. That’s not unusual, I think most people are built that way. Hell, if we weren’t, then civilization would be impossible.

Civilization is deeply challenged, now. The USA in multiple simultaneous existential crises, the world as well. We were, as the curse goes, born in interesting times. Still, I think there’s a James B. Donovan somewhere in each (or at least, hopefully most) of us, and this gives me something resembling hope. Toward the end of the movie, Donovan assures Francis Gary Powers that it doesn’t matter what people think he did, because, “You know what you did.”

That stays with me.

Exile On FB Street

Peculiar end to my Facebook saga:  After trying unsuccessfully to quit, numerous times over the years since 2007, I was unceremoniously banished on December 24, 2024. They won’t tell me why other than that they can’t confirm my identity. Well, that’s a chuckle, because, I can’t, really, either!  Who am I?  OK, well I mostly know. Eric Din. Eric Roy Dinwiddie. Same same.

But FB. I could go further with the effort to get back in, but nah. I wasted some time there, as one does. It’s a time-wasting engine, designed to suck your energy oh and yes they are ruining society in myriad ways. Bye bye. So the 1500 or so people who I was friends with there, they can still find me if they want to, and anyway FB wasn’t showing most of them my posts anymore, which was frustrating.  If I shared a cat photo it would get all sorts of likes and loves and awwws, but post a new song and like, two, three people respond. I get it, I prefer cats too. But how much is indifference from my pals, and how much is FB simply not showing the Bandcamp or other external links to them?  No way to know, and weeds grow in the mind.

I have less weeds in the absence of all that.

Twitter, I quit that venue the day whatshisbutt took over and called it “X,” I mean, come on, the worst rebrand since New Coke, and as much a failure.  Everyone should quit but they won’t cos I don’t know why.  I guess the more followers one has there, the harder to leave, and I get that.

So now this blog is a tree falling in the woods.  I wonder if anyone sees it.  I could look at the stats but I don’t care that much.  I’ve become indifferent to indifference.  I feel at peace with myself and my work and my art and my cats and the earth.

Last year saw some monumental disappointments, near and far from me.  My longtime friend and more recent career coach died by his own hand, a little more than one year ago, and that’s still very hard for me to even comprehend.  His choice, he rests in peace, no judgement here, but I do wish he had chosen to stay.  Then the Nov. 5 debacle to end all debacles.  And right now not one but two of my dear old friends are dealing with cancer, and I pray for their victories and health.

What does it all add up to here for me on this Thursday morning with a little welcome rain approaching this weekend?  Gratitude.  For this moment and all the moments.  For all the moments with each of the aforementioned friends, which I remember so vividly.  I have in this life tried to spend my time with people who savor life and music and art and tend to treat themselves and others with love and respect.  And the mind in its vastness can hold so many memories and some in startling detail.

60, I’ll be 60 soon.  With some amount of surprise, I now feel that’s an accomplishment in itself.  I like the number, I like the age, so much more than I had earlier expected to, somehow.  I keep my memories with me, they are wealth.  Even the hard ones, all gifts.  And in some contrast to the state of the world, my own life has been full of luck and good work and good play and wonder and joy over these recent years.  We never know when something will go awry and I am grateful for every good moment.

This song, which went live in the streaming worldly world today, was a nice step in my journey, dealing with some of the above.

Meanwhile, in Dystopilandia,

half of all internet traffic is now bots. Glory be, we’ve lost the meaning of life. The meaning of life being closely tied to being alive, and this being a darkly comical hellscape of things that are not alive, poking at us. Some are feeding the ravenous maw of AI “learning” monstrosities and others are more directly criminal, trying to hack your accounts for any number of nefarious plots. Nostalgically I recall the web “crawlers” of old, indexing the “web logs” and websites, so we could find an interesting read quickly without wading through a dumpster fire of advertisements and cookie agreements, and how cool the Internet was or seemed to be before greed and ugliness swamped all.

Meaning of life, meaning of life.

I make a record, I write a post, I record a podcats (sic) I do these things with my hands and voice and thoughts and tools that yes, include computer technology throughout, but I have no desire to have the tools overtake the joyful tasks and make me merely an observer of them. I don’t want this for our kids, either, I worry for them and I am glad to have lived before this. I don’t even like the little prompts on my text app – “Can I call you later?” “In a meeting,” or whatever. No, you see because I choose my own words, I choose my words because I am alive and have the human gift of language.

Creepiness abounds.  LinkedIn, which I like for some things, is all heavy into AI every which way now, it seems. I go to make a post – I usually just re-share my mewsletter (sic) and the first thing I see is a “Rewrite with AI” prompt.  They also send emails telling me how many “impressions” my posts there have gotten in a week and how many times my profile has been found in “searches” there. These notices are automated of course and if I upgrade to Premium I can see who these mysterious searchers are, and hey, I don’t mind a hustle, everyone on LinkedIn is hustling one way or another and the platform needs to make money like anyone else so fine fine. I’m actually going to take a LinkedIn Learning course about AI that seems geared to understanding and adapting to the reality of it and not simply “leveraging” it, for the love of yawn. I want to know more about this because it’s not going away and I honestly fear it may drive us all mad.

Anyway I don’t want to have a machine talk or write for me, and that won’t change. Like the New Orleans chef in Apocalypse Now saying “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” and ripping off his shirt, I do not want it. I do not want it, Sam I Am. Not over here or over there, or with a tiger or with a bear.

I will do my own bad writing. I will do my own good writing. Sometimes I may even write something great and feel good about it. Again, the meaning of life. These kinds of things give our lives meaning. And this I want.

The mad rush to AI-everything and “mine” stupid bitcoins is speeding the heating of the planet, everything is being deregulated by dangerous maniacs, and people are thrilled to be able to “make” a song or movie or novel or essay or resume without doing much but “prompt” an AI-chatterboxthingy.

I don’t want it.
Hi tiger.  Bye tiger.

Caturday Log, Supplemental

I improvise, when cooking or preparing food, much as I improvise while creating music. At this moment, I am eating a toasted garlic-sourdough slice adorned with my own riff on the basic tuna salad. Tuna, mayo, a smooth German mustard, chopped onion, sweet pickle relish, some chopped avocado, chopped tomato, and dashes of salt and coarsely ground black pepper.

Delicious Caturday fare, and of course, the actual cats take an immediate interest. Not eager to give them too much tuna (the good veterinarian advises the mercury levels can cause problems), but not wishing to exclude them from this activity (and run the risk of their ire), I separate a chunk of the fish before mixing with other ingredients, and provide it to the felines in their proper eating area thereby satisfying them just long enough for me to have time to complete the hooman-food preparation unmolested.

In another life I am a chef. In this life, I also cook music. Of my recent outings, I am particularly fond of some instrumentals. Being a wordy lad, it’s been satisfying for me to just make some enjoyable music rabbit holes for a change of pace. In reverse chronological order, these tracks I created entirely at home.

One might argue that the latter two are not strictly instrumental, for they involve a few words, more spoken than sung. These I find loosely in the tradition of The Skatalites‘ treatment of Guns Of Navarone, where the title is the lyric, and it’s said a few times and the rest is carried by the band.

In the WORDY department, one of my wordiest, the epic Push the Better Button has a new remastered single out on Berkeley Cat Records, and I’m frankly a little giddy about it. See, unlike the above 3, Better Button took a lot of time and effort to create. Not a quickie tuna-salad on a Caturday, nay, it involved weeks and multiple revisions and wranglings to create an actual functioning all-purpose Better button.

The Button became track 1 on my 1st solo album STREET PARTY, and yes, I was pleased with the outcome, but by that point I was also exhausted by it. Not in a terrible way, though – I learned a LOT about my own processes, both technically and emotionally, working on that song, and collaborating on it long-distance with some of my UpTones musical brethren.

That was in 2020, and here about 5 years later, I’m releasing a smashing remaster of it, by audio masterblaster Leo Frappier. It’s very gratifying for me to hear this track with fresh ears, I do love this remaster, and I hope you might press the button yourselves, in the name of bettering.

And now, cats and hoomans fed, despatches sent, I’m going to practice some tunes on the acoustic guitar, for to sing next Sunday at Ivy Room opening for Psycotic Pineapple.

What else, after that, then? Oh, I suppose I’ll make something up.

-Eric Din

Nerding Forth About Time Signatures, Time Machines, AI, and The Future

A few weeks ago I experimented with a Ska pattern in 7/4 time. It worked spectacularly and I loved the result, so completed and published it as Inside the All Night Ska Disco at Area 51.

Just yesterday I started messing with a ska-adjacent pattern in 6/8 meter, and it got very tropically islandy shangri-lala delighty, so I am eagerly following through with that.

By humorous coincidence, yesterday I came across a ridiculous, probably AI-written, “summary” of Ska music, in the increasingly rotten Inter-mess. In this garbled splutage, it was stated that Ska music is in 4/4 time. Fie, unimaginative robot!  Ska music is usually in 4/4 time, get it right. It IS in 4/4 until someone does otherwise, and I am sure plenty of earlier examples do exist before mine.

“The future is unwritten,” Joe Strummer reminded. Good thing to note, generally, and why especially now, I would think.

So far my attempts at creating a magic sci-fi time machine to put every eligible voter back to Nov. 4 2024 for a make-up exam have failed. We certainly shouted it from the rooftops last year, said loudly and clearly what will happen if that election goes south. It. Is. Now. Exactly. As. Predicted. Whoopsiebears, now they mad. Wiser persons than I may understand it.

I did manage to fashion a 1983 time-capsule, that was fun. Orwell said there might be trouble, and, well.

Good morning!  I’m sipping a nice Peet’s French Roast, brewed in an old-School drip coffee maker from the before time. We’ve probably had this trusty machine since the ’90s, ever faithfully delivering its oh so important yield at the start of each day. Obsolete it is not.

Driving a Chevy Bolt, and GLAD I never got a Tesla. Horrified, that what has been one of the leading EV-makers is now so irrevocably tainted.  It’s not fun times for Tesla owners, as drama ensues, and presumably used models are not fetching “Blue Book” as the brand plummets straight to hell.

What next, we wonder?  I dunno, Joe, the Future is full of Uncertain Tea. But as you say, unwritten.

I’ll keep recording new original songs whenever the inspiration strikes me, and post them here or here per my whim. Whims are good for artistic direction, I find. These tunes are also in the big ol’ streaming world, including now YouTube, so, find ’em anywhere – Pandora, Apple Music, DEEZER, Spotify..  As the pipelines get flooded and polluted by AI-generated content, I’ll be among the artists creating our own material. For what it’s worth, and I don’t know what it’s worth, but it feels right. As long as it feels right, I will do it. One small part of the vast human discussion. The cats seem to enjoy it.