Long Dark Iced-Tea Time Of The Soul

The Woodstar Cafe, here in Northampton, is making their awesome iced-tea again. Winter is, my friends, finally over.

Phew.

This Weekend In Music

March 27:
Oweihops, The Jason Bourgeois Band, World's Greatest Dad
at: The Rendezvous 78 3rd St, Turners Falls, MA 01376
(413) 863-2866, 9:30 PM - (Henning plays drums with the Jason Bourgeois Band)

March 28 (daytime):
Meltdown: The River's Family Music and Book Bash
A day of music, book readings, food, activities, vendors, and more for kids and the whole family.
Saturday, March 28. - J.F.K. Middle School - Northampton, MA 01060 - 10 am - 4 pm.

Music From: The Nields * Deedle Deedle Dees * Uncle Rock * Aric Bieganek * Laura Cayer * School for the Dead (1:00 PM) * Ratboy Jr. * Marcy Gregoire * Dennis Caraher * …and many more! Readings From: Jane Yolen * Anna Alter * Jarrett Krosoczka * Timothy Basil Ering...and a whole lot more - local vendors, great food, activities, River DJ storytelling, and surprises! And it's all free!

March 28 (evening):
St. Patriot's Day! - The tenth annual extravaganza!
The Aloha Steamtrain, The Novels, Los Hijos Unicos
The Elevens Pleasant Street Northampton, MA 01060
10:00 PM

Just A Random Photo

Not feeling the inspiration to write, I instead scanned through some of my old pictures on Flickr and decided to post one that caught my fancy. Here you go.

One News Is Bad News

I have this nagging suspicion that it is possible for two or more news stories to be happening at any one time. You wouldn't know it by turning on a cable new channel but I swear it's true. All I get these days on CNN is tips for coupon clipping. What do I have to do? Read a newspaper?!?! What is this? The forties?!?! Feed it to me! Feed me!

Spring Again?

This one flower wins the race two years in a row. This year spring is starting sooner. Unless it sees its shadow and turns into Bill Murray.

2008 (First opened on March 24)


2009 (First opened on March 14)

Redditoke, Open Digg, Nerd-Fest?

OK, some nerdy entrepreneur is welcome to take this idea and run wild with it. Because, we all know I'll never do it.

With the advent of all these social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg and Boing Boing and all the others, doesn't it only stand to reason that eventually somebody is going to take this and turn it into a live show? Here's what I mean. Let's say you find a venue, probably a hipster bar of some sort, and you set up a few big TV screens and a lap top computer and you host a YouTube Night.

You as the host, spend a weekend compiling all the best clips you can find and then you put on this show. People come in, they get a drink, and then they sit around while you show all the funny, or whatever, videos that you found. You could do it with things other than videos, too. Why not shows website galleries of interesting pictures or works of art or comics or anything?

In fact, you could make this even easier for you as the host. You start a Facebook page or a website where people send you things they find interesting then you just compile them and present them in a live setting.

Or what about an open mic type night where people bring in their laptops or iPhones or other magic paraphernalia and they can hook it into your system, everyone gets fifteen minutes to share their finds with the audience. You could call it Redditoke, or Open-Digg, or Nerd-Fest.

Is anybody doing any of this yet? It seems like a no-brainer to me. It takes hardly any resources, not much work, and the payout could be huge. Once you prove to the venue that you can bring people in, they'll pay you accordingly. And maybe you can sell T-Shirts or something.

Please, somebody with some kind of gumption make this happen. Surely someone in San Francisco can accomplish this successfully right?

If you want to cut me a percentage, that's ok.

YouTube As A Musical Instrument - Kutiman's Thru-You

If you were to hand me an object and there was anyway in which to make a sound with that object, I would try to make that sound. Take me down the soda aisle at the grocery store and I will find it difficult not to tap as many two liter bottles as possible. They sound like bells.

I'm not saying that I am special or anything. This is just my thing. I like to make sounds. For a gazillion years, people have been making sounds. First drums, then whistles, and flutes, and stringed things, and xylo-what-nots. Anytime a new technology or substance comes along, people try to figure out a way to make music with it. Synthesizers came around because of the electronics they are made from. Oh look, a light sensor, let's make a light controlled theramin. The examples are infinite.

It only makes sense that eventually people would begin to think of recorded music as an instrument. Maybe it started with the Mellotron, that beautiful keyboard that uses actual tape loops of different instruments. After that, people started sampling songs, turning other peoples recordings into instruments that they could use to create their own works. Why not? A piano makes a piano sound, a record makes a different sound. For as long as there have been scissors, people have been making collages.

Last night, Ken, hipped me to a new sampling technique. Welcome to the insane new world of Thru-You by Kutiman. Kutiman has turned YouTube into an instrument. By taking an assortment of clips from other people on YouTube and editing and cutting them to make them fit, Kutiman has created some jaw-droppingly beautiful collages of audio and video. Maybe he takes a clip of a woman singing to her baby, he then cuts up a video of someone playing the organ to make them play the same melody. Take a video of a kid filming himself play the drums, add in a snipped up bit of a school recital by a string quartet and he's created a whole new composition.

It's perfectly brilliant. It's one of those how-could-I-not-have-thought-of-this-things that makes perfect sense and seems so obvious now that you've seen it.

But when you watch these clips only part of the enjoyment is in thinking about the process. Certainly it took an unthinkable amount of work to put these pieces together, but what really stands out is the true artistry of the works. I literally got shivers during parts of these. Especially the somehow heartbreaking last bit of "I'm New". Make sure you watch that one and make sure you watch it until the end. Turn it up loud.

I'd love to hear what the different musicians, who are unknowingly featured in the performances, think about it. There's a full documentary right there pretty much already written for you. Make it.

I hope you enjoy the videos. I only posted two here but you can learn and see more here: Thru-You

Kids Prefer MP3 Sound Quality

Jonathan Berger, a music professor from Stanford, tests all of his incoming students each year to see how they feel about different audio mediums. His discover lately is that more and more, students prefer the overly compressed sound of MP3s. While, at first, this seems crazy, it make sense to me.

I've listened many times to people arguing over sound quality issues. Some prefer digital, some prefer analog, some like CDs, some like LPs, etc etc etc. I've always believed that people just like the thing that they heard the most in their formative listening years. Whatever you listened to when you were between, say 12 and 22 is probably the sound that you most prefer.

Now kids are growing up listening to MP3s. That's how music sounds to them. That's how, as far as they are concerned, the music is supposed to sound. These things come and go in waves with changing technology. Nobody's ever going to define the best sounding thing because it is all based on personal feelings.

I personally don't have too much of a problem with MP3s as long as they are high quality ones, but I can't stand IPod Ear Buds. They just sound terrible to me. Other people probably prefer those to the headphones that I wear. Everybody's got their own bag.

These kids who prefer the MP3 sound are no different than people who prefer vinyl records. They're just newer.

Rainy Morning Playlist - Magic

My superhero phone was on shuffle this morning. How's this for a rainy-morning-walk playlist?

The Morning: Another Morning - Moody Blues
Army Dreamers - Kate Bush
The Final Cut - Pink Floyd
Maxwell's Silver Hammer - The Beatles
The Most Beautiful World In The World - Hary Nilsson
Linda - Randy Newman
It's Only Love - the Beatles

What Type Of Person Are You?

Which type of person are you?

You approach the check out aisle at your local gigundo supermarket but you don't have a shopping cart with you. Instead, you have the little red riding hood hand held basket. It's swinging delightedly at your side full of horrible treats. It's your turn up at bat, so you unload your treacherous comestibles and place them one-by-one on the little conveyor belt that delivers them to the adorable clerk behind the register. Now, it's time to figure out who you are.

You've got to discard your little basket under the front section of the counter. Below it, you will find other baskets. They are designed to fit inside one another neatly. However, you notice that the last person to place one has done it haphazardly and it is askew at some nutty angle. It is half in and half out of the basket below it. Now, it's time to figure out who you are.

Are you the person who figures that since one person screwed up the order of things you may as well give-in to their carelessness and just continue the cascading jenga-tower of misplaced baskets?

Or are you the person who takes five seconds and reaches down to fix things. Do you nudge the pile of baskets so that the faulty one on top clunks down into its perfect position so that yours will fit in snugly like it's supposed to?

I like to think that you, dear reader, are the second type of person.

Who dat?

He writes his first post in 30 years and it's a bunch of links? The nerve of this guy...

Guitar lessons yesterday found me working on teaching this song to a student and I kept confusing the riff with the one from the song "The New You":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rgInHvW8Ic

In one afternoon of guitar lessons, one student asked me to help him learn the song above while another had me playing a Sublime song and then I wrapped up the day by working with another on the guitar part of "Dueling Banjos."




Yes, this seems about right:

Poke!

Why Are These Shows So Late?!?

There is a day culture and there is a night culture. For a lot of years now, I've been living with one foot in each. When you play music in a band, it generally means lots of late nights. But why is that? Why do these shows have to be so late? I mean, there are a lot of people who really can't go out that late. Many times, when I tell someone what time we are playing, they respond with groans. I don't blame them. In fact, sometimes, when I find out what time we are playing, I respond with groans.

A typical line-up in a rock club involves three bands. The first generally is slated to start at 9:30 or 10:00. They almost always start a little later than that. The scond band then usually plays at around 11:00 with the last band starting at midnight. That's how it often goes down where I am from. If you play one of the rock and roll assembly-line clubs in NYC or Boston. Places like Arlene Grocery or T.T. The Bear's you'll find more bands per evening playing shorter sets and going even later in to the night. In my town, bars have to be closed by 2:00 AM. They usually like the music to stop around 1:30 or so, so they have time to kick everyone out.

Now, to people who live in the night culture this all makes perfect sense. It all revolves, like so many things do, with the consumption of alcohol. It's all about pacing. If you know that 2:00 AM is your cut off time, then it makes sense that you wouldn't really want to hit the bar until at least after ten. Since bars have bands just as a way to bring in more pople to buy booze it follows that they wouldn't need them to play until it was likely that drinkers would actually be showing up. It's as simple as that.

Unfortunately, for those living in the day culture this can be really difficult, especially on weekdays. It would be like asking some of the night culture people to wake up at 6:00 AM to go to a show. Just crazy.

The rub is that a cultural shift has begun. There are many many people out there who are die-hard rock music fans but they have just happened to have reached a stage in their life where the late night life is very difficult. They might have children at home. They probably have early morning jobs. These people don't want to see live music any less than the late night crowd, it's just very difficult for them. Unfortunately, selling music without also selling booze is also very, very difficult. And selling booze at 7:00 PM to people who have to return home to relieve their baby sitters is not very profitable.

In a perfect world, a great band could play a show at seven o'clock and a big crowd of folks would like nothing more than to pay to see it. However, in most towns across the country, the number of people who fit that mold is not big enough to sustain an early evening music scene. That is, unless you are an already established artist with a catalog of records and fans. If you can tour across the country and you know that in each town you play there are a hundred true fans of your music, well, then you can schedule a show for as early in the evening as you'd like. Our local smaller national act venue here in Northampton, Massachusetts is The Iron Horse Music Hall. They have two shows just about every night. One at 7:00 and one at 9:30. They start and end promptly and they do very well. How do they do this? How do they bring people in at 7:00? They charge fairly high ticket prices, they serve dinner, and they book bands with built in fans.

Non-established national acts, however, that are playing in bars still have to play these late night shows if they really want anybody there to see them. We've tried many times to put on earlier shows but it is almost impossible to get people to come. The whole bar-as-a-music-venue culture is a all a huge mess and I've been trying to figure out a way to fix it for years.

The problem is that there are all different kinds of bands. A bar band is a great thing, they play music that makes people want to dance or drink or just feel like they are at a party. Maybe they play covers or a type of music that is easily digested as a familiar background mood. But for every great bar band there are a dozen interesting art bands. Acts they make music not for background but for foreground appreciation. I was at a show recently where a really interesting boy-girl duet was playing. The lyrics were good, the music was really well worked out, they played all kinds of different instruments - but there were only about four people listening. The musicians were suffering, the bar was suffering, and, in a way, the audience was suffering too.

A bar was not the right venue for this duo. But, and here's the really problem, what is the right venue? Is there a place where someone can play a show that is meant for listening and that people will actually go to? Doesn't seem possible. There just aren't enough people out there interested in actually listening to live music. I don't mean to blame anyone, everybody has their own passions, I just mean to say that the demand does not meet the supply. There was a venue in my town for a while that was actually called "The Listening Room". The point was to have a room just for the purpose of going and watching a show. You didn't have to worry about the clack of the pool balls or the people up by the bar screaming at each other while the music was playing.

The place was a huge success. For about four months. Then the newness wore off and people remembered that when they go out for the night they want to talk to each other, play pool, etc.

The demand just doesn't support the supply. If it did, then there would be a venue there that could have music earlier. Now, lots of people tell me, yeah, but if the shows were earlier I would come to them. They suggest that if the opportunity was presented then the demand would support the supply. Unfortunately, in my experience, there just aren't enough of these people out there to make it work. I wish I knew how to fix it.

Mark Mulcahy Interview 2006

Here's a good interview with our buddy Mark Mulcahy from 2006 that I had never seen before:

Mark Mulcahy Interview Link

Excerpt:

"I met another guy there at that gig who was a musician, and he said, "Hey, I would like to play with you, but let's get rid of the crazy guy." He and I played together for a bit, and then he had the courage to reply to an ad. The guys who placed the ad said they didn't like him much, but they liked me, so, I ended up in the music business crawling my way all over people from the outset (Laughs)."

Robyn Hitchcock on Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk

There's a nice blog called Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk that is currently going through the catalog of Robyn Hitchcock albums and writing a little bit about each one. It's nice to hear someone else's take on these records that have been such a big part of my life. Go check it out. Today they discussed Groovy Decay. Last time was Black Snake Diamond Role.

Three Poems About Shapes

The Square
Jesters and villains, always beware
of the sturdy and confident, serious square.

The Circle
After the decimal, the digits of pi,
sound like a circle rolling quietly by.

The Triangle
In love or in Bermuda, it's very hard to sleep,
once you've seen the shadow of this deadliest creep.

SFTD for the Kids at the Meltdown - March 28

Meltdown: The River's Family Music and Book Bash
A day of music, book readings, food, activities, vendors, and more for kids and the whole family. Saturday, March 28. J.F.K. Middle School. 10 am - 4 pm.

Music From:

* The Nields
* Deedle Deedle Dees
* Uncle Rock
* Aric Bieganek
* Laura Cayer
* School for the Dead
* Ratboy Jr.
* Marcy Gregoire
* Dennis Caraher
* …and many more!

Readings From:

* Jane Yolen
* Anna Alter
* Jarrett Krosoczka
* Timothy Basil Ering

...and a whole lot more - local vendors, great food, activities, River DJ storytelling, and surprises!
And it's all free!

School for the Duet - A Memoir

On Friday, we had a School for the Dead show. Unfortunately, both Max and Brian were suddenly unable to attend, so it was just Tony and me up there on the stage. We had a good time anyway and I think we put on a pretty good show, I mean, just look at that picture. Tony was on fire!

Thanks Debbie Way for the photo. It was a strange night at The Elevens. There was hardly anybody in the room for most of the time. We had only a handful of people there to see us. Thank you so much, handful, you made all the difference. It was kind of weird because we were in our home town on our home stage and it felt like we were out of town because I recognized hardly anybody there. There was a band on the bill who was playing their first ever show so they had all their friends there to see them. Ah, the first shows are so easy and it seems like you'll always have a crowd.

Tony and I hit on some oldies from the School for the Dead catalog that we don't play much these days. We did "Sitcom Theme" for example and we did "The Wichita Train Whistle Sings" because it was an email request. We had a request for "Everybody Loves Martha" too and it was on our set list but we skipped it mid-show. We also debuted two new songs and I could tell that when the full band plays them, they are gonna come together real nice. Real nice.

I had also created a School for the Dead Instant Survey about Whirlpools and some people actually did fill it out, but I just completely forgot about it when we were on stage. Sheesh. Sorry.

Between each song, I tried to come up with a different reason why Max and Brian weren't there. Here are some that I can remember:

1. They were eaten by bears.
2. There was a freak alpine slide accident.
3. They fell in a hole.
4. We had them murdered.
5. They were in NYC rehearsing for their upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance.
6. They eloped and were in Detroit.

oh me, oh my

It's one thing when a member of the band doesn't post anything for like 6 months. It's another thing when he doesn't post for 6 months AND THEN misses a gig. Can I make up for it with a smile and a post? Let's see...

Well, let's start with the missed gig: 2 words: 24 hour stomach bug. You know the rest. Oh man... And to boot, just as I was celebrating full health after a week-long cold. Aye. It's been an interesting 2009 so far.
I also presently have a purple little toe on my left foot from a door-stop I didn't see when walking barefoot the morning after my horrible 24 hour bug. I kicked it. It hurt.

On to happier things...

where the hell have I been? I've been here the whole time! It's just like, you get out of the habit of something, it's the hardest thing in the world to pick it up again. Like a book...go 3 days without reading it, good luck wanting to finish it. So many other ideas and plans and schemes have filled your head, who needs that book you only have 40 pages left of? (this is currently my deal with the AWESOME, WHERE HAS IT BEEN ALL MY LIFE novel White Noise by Dom Delillo. I read the first 3/4 of it on vacation and got back and resumed life and forgot the book. I WILL finish it, maybe during this snowstorm).

This winter has been pretty lame, huh? Snow, snow snow. Days off from work and then double doses of work upon returning.

Well, I can't remember when I last posted, so I'll give a basic rundown of life in the last 6 months:

mid/late summer '08: ended a relationship. moved out, taking just what I needed. it was the stripped down life I wanted after the fire, but wasn't sure whether I was just in a bad state back then. moved into 2 bdrm with other local musician guy, Matt S. We get along, and are both busy so not a whole lot of run-ins. Everything I own fits into a small-ish bedroom and I'm pretty happy about it. It's a neighborhood I used to live in years ago with Lord Russ.

fall '08: getting into single-guy routine, making the rock scene, living small, still happy, unsure about impending cold weather. better buy more blankets. no cats anymore to keep warm at night.
I begin seeing a lovely lady who has 2 cats. We are still an item as I write this.

Fall-winter: begin recording new Sitting next to Brian project. An E.P. which will be 6 songs, called The Wrong Tree E.P. with cover art by the famous Scott Alden. The band on this outing is: Henning, Jason, Thane, me. No guests this time around. It may just be a cardboard sleeve with the art on either side. Living small.
Obama wins the presidential election. We all smile.

of course through all this, there have been gigs galore, right? right. Haunt, Fawns, SFTD, SNTB...

New years 2008-9. An Aloha Steamtrain show at the Sierra Grille. A drunken reveler breaks one of my ribs while giving me a new years hug between sets. It sets me back 3 weeks. I stupidly ignore it at first and work, lifting heavy things, probably doing it no favors. I get it checked out. 2 weeks of no lifting, except the bottle o' pills to help me sleep.

Winter 2009 A sort of winter depression sets in as the rib heals, knowing we have so much more left to go, meanwhile, everything hurts. Scraping the car, putting on a seatbelt, putting on socks. And we get one major friggin storm every week.

For some reason, in my spare time I begin reexamining the music of the Grateful Dead, after discovering a site with all their shows archived and downloadable or streamable.
Lemme tell you: I was an active listener of the Dead from 8-11 grade. College and being surrounded by Deadheads made me never want to hear them again, and it's been a very gradual warming up process since then. But the combo of the downtime, being laid up with the rib and the winter blues suddenly made certain eras (pretty much 67-74 and a bit of 77-81) very nice to listen to and explore. When going to bed alone, I've been selecting a show to fall asleep to.

I began coming up with new musical avenues to explore which would probably be of no interest to anyone. Like the intersection where the "noisy" Dead (as much noise as noodle) meet the "tamed" Velvet Underground (post Cale). So, like late '68-69. I suppose this would be kind of parts of Television or Sonic Youth. But suddenly something made me wanna play something like that. I don't know if that'll ever happen. (they in fact shared a few bills around 1969. I read Lou Reed would insult the Dead, saying "those paisley asses wouldn't last a week in the Chelsea". When you think about it, though, Lou Reed had an English degree from Syracuse, while Jerry Garcia dropped out and moved out when he was 16, making it on his own. I think he'd probably survive ok in most situations. Anyway, there are a few photos of the Velvets at this time, in fact WEARING paisley).

The other project would be where the song-oriented Dead (70-72 when Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter co-wrote at least 50 classics) meet the Michael Nesmith of 70-72.
See, when the alt.country lines were drawn in the mid 90's, neither Nesmith or the Dead were on the correct side. Nesmith was square and verbose, the Dead were weed instead of whiskey. I'd like to hear an alt. alt. country in which these two groups are the kingpins. I think the "intellectual stoner" rock of the last few years may approach it. Mountain Movers, Silver Jews....

So there's my deal. I know. last summer I was raving about the Fall and Joy Division.

Um, so...here we are. It's March. I'm feeling better. Yes, we're about to have 8 more goddamn inches of snow.

Oh, well: almost forgot. A week ago, K and I spent 3 nights in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It was so, so beautiful. It was a resort, yes, but an "eco-resort" where all the buildings were "green" and there were some animals on the grounds. The food and booze were so-so. But it was abundant and free (all-inclusive).
We took a half-day trip to Tulum (Mayan ruin city) at which we pissed off an old couple by being 5 minutes late for the return trip back to the resort. ("that was very, very thoughtless", grumbled the old man. Like he was now gonna be 5 minutes late for something. You're on fucking VACATION!!)

We had to stay an extra night in Atlanta because there were tornadoes in the area and the plane was unsure of a take off time. We'd already missed our connecting flight so we got a room at the red Roof. Bleh.
The next morning we flew to Detroit. Wow, their airport has a very psychedelic area where you're on the moving walkway thingy and the walls are flashing rainbow colors all around you. I loved it. Also, their gift shops proudly displayed Obama tshirts and mugs and things. It was a good vibe airport.

Anyway, then we both got sick with colds pretty much upon landing at Bradley.
And that brings you up to speed of where I been at.

Oh, I've also been on Facebook a whole lot. It's taken my time off of Blogger and Myspace. Facebook is where I hang now, more or less. I got a good page on it called
"marchese-brand drumming" where I post the news of all my projects and songs and links to where to buy etc.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Marchese-Brand-Drumming/55401156936?ref=ts

ok, bye. I won't make any promises when I'll write next because I've become a bad, bad friend.