Category: Recordings

This is a blog category with posts about some records I have helped make over the years. Hope you enjoy!

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.

In Defense of In Defense of In Defense of Ska

And oh what fun we had

It’s been a few years since the first edition of Aaron Carnes’ unique and amorous history of Ska music and culture landed in the book-o-sphere. I recently ordered and received a copy of the expanded 2nd edition and yet I haven’t found the time yet to read it, what with work and creative endeavors and the apocalypse and things. SO! Delighted am I to learn that Aaron himself sat down and READ ALOUD the entire thing over several days of recording sessions to create, an audio-book. Now that’s my speed. We can now hear these stories as told by the author directly, and I applaud this fervently.

I recently listened again to the UpTones episode of the In Defense of Ska PodCast in which they interviewed myself and Paul Jackson. Apart from a few crunchy bits (there are always a few crunchy bits), it turns out to be my personal favorite, of the audio interviews we have done. In part because I learned some things, realized some things that I hadn’t really considered before, which become much more plain, in hindsight.

One rather humorous piece – neither Paul nor I, nor any of our bandmates, to my knowledge, were very aware of the up and down trends in ska’s popularity. We just always loved ska, it was never in question. But in 2002 when the UpTones played our first show in over twelve years, it turns out, I learned MUCH later thru Aaron’s work, we couldn’t have picked a less trend-observant moment to re-emerge!

Didn’t care then, don’t care now, in terms of our choice, it’s fitting, really, yet I do find it delightful. Puts some context to things. Why, for example, was this kid in the front row yelling, “YOU’RE SAVING SKA!!” at us? Flattered though I was, I wasn’t aware that ska needed any saving, and besides, what a responsibility! We carried on, played shows all the way through to 2018, with, again, some lineup changes along the way per our normal, finally winding down after the Albany, CA funfest I mentioned in a recent post here.

OH! And in that post, I was mistaken, there IS a poster for that Albany show, silly me, and I have it on my wall here as well. Another Paul original, and here is a photo of same:

While I abstain from predicting the future, that was the last UpTones show to date, and the obstacles to ever create another one seem insurmountable from here. So it goes, as Mr. Vonnegut would say. In an odd bit of prescience, the East Bay Express article by the same said Aaron Carnes before the above gig, quotes me as saying, “The Uptones have always been an outlet, letting some steam off and turning some suffering into joy and getting moving instead of getting immobilized by the situation,” Din said. “The way I look at it now is any show could be our last one. Or it could be the beginning of another round of shows. I tend to accept whatever it is.”

And accept it I do. Maybe the kid who yelled “you’re saving ska” is leading their own group, now! I rather hope so. Aaron is moving on from this epic project, after two editions and an audiobook, and dozens of podcast interviews with many of the players and characters involved over decades of ska’s unique and powerful history. He has defended ska, and defended it well, and as a fan and participant in this wild story, I tip my hat. Bon voyage on your next literary adventures, Mr. Carnes, and thank you.

Oh one more fun bit – my song Donkeyfish, now track 1 on my Poppin’ the Ska solo-ish album, is directly inspired by memories of all of the above.

All best,

Eric Dinwiddie
Ska fan

Originally posted at https://berkeleycatrecords.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-in-defense-of-in-defense

Caturmonday Musings

Drove to Gilman yesterday, picked up my music stand, which I had loaned to a fellow artist last week after my caterwauling. On the way to and from said venue, I listened to some of my own records and my, I like them! People make records for many reasons I am sure, and me? I seem to make records that I want to play, for entertainment, for me. Self-centered? Why yes, by definition. Success is enjoying them, and yesterday, I enjoyed them very much.

I wouldn’t be happy being toooooo predictable, to myself or to anyone observing, when it comes to my artistic output. I s’pose if being marketable were a priority I’d have stuffed myself into a category long ago and tried to be understandable as a public entity. That just seems boring, to me, best left to others who may enjoy that kind of thing.

I’m leaving behind a little legacy of songs, recordings, posts, podcats’s’s and mewsletters, as part of the human record, my small voice in a giant field. Why? Because I choose to, because it feels right to do, because I want to. Free will, what a thing.

There’s a song by XTC on their Oranges & Lemons album which used to haunt me a bit, in particular this repeated line:

He’s always saying what he’s gonna do

The song is One of the Millions by Colin Moulding. The whole album is great, heck everything by XTC is great.

In my youth I was often a frustrated artist, a frustrated boyfriend, a frustrated bandmate a frustrated bandleader, a frustrated person. I had plans but not the means nor skills to implement many of them, yet I strived constantly, continued through my frustration and indeed, said what I was gonna do. I heard myself saying what I was gonna do. And like Colin Moulding, observed this with a certain wariness and dread.

In my youth, if I wanted to record a song and make it into a record, there were a number of hoops to jump through. Gatekeepers to pass. The traditional route for many, back then, was something like this: Record a demo of a song, then teach it to a band, record it properly, then the feloniously dull “shop it around.” To record labels or managers or whomever, OTHER people, gatekeepers, people who are not me.

To be an artist is to be your own gatekeeper. Choose your own path. Make your paintings and hang them on the wall if you like, maybe to find relevance to other people, maybe not. To be an artist is to not be concerned with how a piece is received. To be an entertainer, sure, you need to care about that, and that’s fine, I’ve done a bit of that too, but approaching the end of my sixth decade, I’ve learned I very much prefer the agenda of the artist. Which for me means to make it up as I go and do whatever I want.

This journal style of songwriting, self-producing and self-releasing my own product, CONTENT being the hilarious catch-all term, god, it is so liberating. Demo, nothing, I just make. In fact, some of the songs I have produced in recent years, started as demos lonnnngggg ago when I tried to go the old traditional route. On Top Of The World, for example, man, I demo’d that on a Tascam 4-Track cassette recorder in like, 1991 or so. Couldn’t quite get it to sound the way I wanted to, lyrics not quite complete, couldn’t quite find the right collaborator to help finish the words, band and producer at the time didn’t quite know what to do with it, and it.. died. Well did it? Ah, but no, the idea was still appealing to me, and I remembered it and one morning felt inspired to go for it AND! Now I know how, and have the tools at my fingertips, and, I made the thing, finished lyrics and all, and, I like it. Success.

Lunacy abounds. The world will do its thing. I read yesterday’s email newsletter from Bernie Sanders and bless his great heart, he nails it right on, yet again. Mr. Sanders and Heather Cox Richardson and some other brilliant voices I choose to listen to, and I choose actively.  Much of the Internet and social media today seems focused on feeding content to users, analyzing our habits as dispassionately as if we were laboratory animals, and feeding us what statistically they determine is likely to keep us engaged.

To actively and intentionally curate our own menus of information and experience has always been an essential skill, and I think this has become somehow more complicated of late. Quoting myself,

The feedlot backlit and I am split

from People I May Know. I’m fond of that line, and feed lot can be stylized either as one word or two, it’s a clear double-meaning. I love the image of grazing on the content that is fed to us, in our feed, and the lot – the lot is also a double-meaning, as in “you lot,” or, the space in which we feed.

Quoting myself again,

Tomorrow is a day
Yesterday was one also
There have been some before
Presumably there will be more

I love that! Thought it was a throwaway, really, when I came up with it – an afterthought, nothing remarkable, and intentionally not remarkable due to its place it a rather absurd song, but then, when I hear or read it now, it has considerable meaning, and it makes me smile. Makes me smile.. isn’t that one good aspect, one possible good result, of a piece of art?

They’ve been going in and out of style,
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile

– The Beatles, of course. And what a gorgeous sentiment, what a lovely invention, their imaginary band, led by a Sgt. Pepper, of all things. A pure work of the imagination. Perhaps a bit weary of all things Beatles by then, they invented and inhabited this whole other world, and gave it to us.

But getting back to my previous quote, that chorus is from a song called Derogatory Matrons, and this title, and the main verse, I came up with when I was about 14 and had only just learned of the existence of punk rock and new wave music like, minutes before. Enthralled I was, and in fact, the words “derogatory” and “matrons” had only just entered my vocabulary, and I in fact was not entirely clear what either one meant. But! I liked the way they sounded together, whilst pogoing.  AGES later, odd thing happened, my friend Roger Clark (AKA Little Roger!) asked me to contribute a song to a project he was working on, and I made this track, which didn’t exactly fit the bill for his thing, sooooo, it was mine to mess with aaaand, it reminded me of Derogatory Matrons – the idea and vibe still living in its little song-place in my brain cells that held it for however many decades. So I made the track. It found a happy home on my Sensible Comments album. All very sensible indeed.

Liner Notes for Poppin’ the Ska

Greetings, campers, here are the song-by-song notes for my solo skampilation, Poppin’ the Ska, copied over from my Bandcamp pages, now here in blog form. Cos why not?

Donkeyfish

A ska song about ska? Why yes, Petunia. Conjured up at home in late 2024 and quickly released as a single, this song gave me the notion to compile my more Ska solo efforts into an album, and, here that album is. Put on yr dancing shoes and dive in!

Bennie Got A Boat

A true story, in parts. Features the good Captain Bennie himself, on Bass, and two UpTones horn cats! I’ve had this recording sitting about for a long while, recorded in the early 2000s while the UpTones were having a third (or so) resurrection. As for the Captain, he’s indeed a sailor, always was, since youth, so this part, in the very least, is true!

I Quit (Gone Fishen)

A theme develops! UpTones drummer John Mader helped me bring this puppy home, remote from our studio-caves during the Covidopalypse. A fun and bouncy rejection of all that might vex us in our quest for not being vexed. I’m especially fond of the bass guitar descending octave run a’la funky ’70s, a technique brought forward in ska music by Horace Panter. The huge reverb snare-thingy was quite a project, I pored over this track for a while before calling it soup yet. Listening back now as I compile this album I can say, wow, it actually works quite well! So I’m goin’ fishen.

Rabbitus Maximus

Conceived and recorded on January 1, 2024 and promptly released as a single, appearing here again as part of my Poppin’ the Ska album, Rabbitus Maximus is one of my personal favorites.

Coventry

So much backstory here but when I start to write it, it feels better to let the song speak for itself, and someday I shall write a book. This song came to me so fast, I hardly remember creating it. It took about one day from idea to final mix (quite unlike some of the other tracks in the skallection!)

Bond Meets The Godfather

High-concept? Low-brow?! I dunno, but I like it. Silliest idea but I just had to pursue it, and it was so fun. Can you spot the melodic Easter eggs? We quote the Godfather theme, Gangsters by the Specials, and of course Bond themes! But just a taste, you know, so they don’t send their goons. Mind the ejector seat.

Jupiter Girls

The Poppermost of my Ska-Poppin’, Jupiter Girls was on my first solo album and released as a single. The long-distance production with Steven Bernstein and Jay Lane was ambitious, and I didn’t know if it’d work, but the ska-pop gods smiled upon it! This was another created during my Covidopalypse Renaissance in isolation. The original lyrical idea, I had scribbled on a napkin tipsy on the 51 bus after a night at Jupiter and indeed, there were dancing babies, and the beers were not spilled.

Radiation Boy (solo acoustic live version)

Recorded live at Down Home Music on August 12, 2023, this is one of the first songs I wrote for the UpTones, way back in ’82. I was surprised to find out it works well as a solo acoustic number, enough to include it here.

1983

No accident this comes right after RadBoy on this comp. And wow, what a production this turned out to be. Went big on it, real studio, real drums. Even called in my UpTones bro Paul Jackson to sing BGs on it, and it was all a blast. Rest in peace, Juliet, who made her exit this year, a star to all who knew her. “Scooter rides on the Quake” is a nod to a Robert Seidler (AKA Cole Panther) hit on KQAK and KUSF at the same time those now-legendary stations were spinning the early UpTones. Our original lineup (or, most of it) played our final show on New Years Eve going into 1984, opening for Oingo Boingo at the Warfield in San Francisco. Bill Graham himself brought us a bottle of champagne at midnight, as Boingo sang “Wake up, it’s 1984.”

Talkin’ To The Wall

This is one of the wilder productions I’ve made. I had a recording of myself and Moose Lethridge playing acoustic guitars at my cottage in Rockridge, singing this song which I had just written. The UpTones were semi-retired (again!) and I didn’t see an immediate opportunity to try the song with the band, so I forgot about it for a while. Enter, Covidopalypse! Listening to old tapes (hard drives, rather) I found this and thought, hmm, can I add bass and drums and flesh this out a bit? Sure enough, Thomas White, UpTones founding drummer knocks it out of the park, I add bass, and Adam Beach, UpTones sax man extraordinaire, does his extraordinary thing. All remotely, from their own studio-caves, as such. I love Adam’s phrasing on this. He has a way of dragging a melody into last week and still somehow connecting with the beat in a coherent way. It’s uncanny. Unskanny, if you will. So this track in a funny way, once I Frankensteined it all together, turned out to be a mini-UpTones.

People I May Know (D. Backle remix)

The last and greatest remix of one of my personal faves. Ironic timing, too, since I am in fact (for the first time) in FB exile! Perhaps permanently? We’ll see. Send me kittycats!

Bennie Got A Boat (reprise)

Composed to-order for this collection, Bennie Got A Boat (reprise) is a clear and blatant nod to Enjoy Yourself (reprise) by The Specials. I whipped it up as Shannon finished the cover art, which is also a clear nod! Can you name the R. Crumb album art it’s based on? If you’re around my age, your parents had a copy! One guitar track, some vocals and reverb and very large waves. Hey, is it a true story? As the Clash would say, some of it is, Gabriella! <3 Bon voyage

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.