Friday, March 23, 2007

still toasty from a 10 am to 7 am work burst on the doc score. im still bored of me and my opinions but i did find a cool fifteen minute talk given by michael shermer, the leader of the skeptic society, i thought i would share. what will be of particular interest to you music folk is near the end he does an interesting demo about our perceptions of rock music being played backwards and our ability to hear hidden messages. this was a big deal, when i was a kid, with all the 'rock is the devils music' types. of course his talk has good information as well but if you dont normally consider yourself the dweeby thoughtful type, it is entertaining and its only fifteen minutes long. Check it.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

i missed david bowie. having loved bowie so much as a kid, but hearing his hits placed so often in commercials etc., i wondered if i had lost my love. so i had the idea that i would create a playilist of all the songs that havent been overplayed or overused from records that i didnt listen to as much as a kid. i listened to bowie before i was old enough to know how cool he was; also listening to styx, kiss and elton john singing with kiki dee at the time. but my best friends father was a famous guitarist named gabor szabo and he introduced me to bowie. i was maybe 11 years old? but i digress, back to the bowie playlist, basically i saw making a playlist of deepcuts as a way to sort of rediscover an artist i know well and loved once. got me thinking that artists deep cuts have always been what gave an artist a depth to their fan base; devotion. but some of that went away with the focus on singles, or i should say refocus on singles (pop started that way after all). the music biz furthered their own demise along more quickly with this fixation on singles, which fit in nicely to the early small bandwith download culture of the late nineties. not enough bandwith yet to download an entire cd but enough to make pirating a single song doable. and if you repeatedly dupe us into buying expensive cds with only one good song, while bandwith starts going broadband and digital copy ability/internet distribution makes downloading copies of songs easier and easier, you have a recipe for the disaster the major labels find themselves in. tough to feel bad for them. the enormous vacuum they left is being filled piecemeal by lots of smaller and exceedingly more interesting businesses and models. i will watch it continue to unfold to the tune of 'memories of a free festival'. the sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

hello my friends. i know i have been remiss in my blogging duties. partly due to the fact that i was unable to get onto blogger.com for what i believed was a blogger problem. it turned out it was something i have never encountered on my own end. fascinating stuff, i know. but i have been busy. mostly busy writing some music for a friends documentary called the 11th hour. interesting stuff about environment, greed and renewable strategies. i am doing half of the score and a much more musically qualified french composer named jean pascal beintus is doing the other half. i also took some pix the other day in venice for a forthcoming announcement about my solo cd.

that is all for now. im off to help a friend celebrate his 40th birthday.

found a great quick read. some succinct answers for all the annoying times ive had to endure hearing people, including our president, speak of science as something you believe in, 'scientism', like any other religion. its a little essay by phil plait, the bad astronomer.