As a musician, I'm of course very interested in the role of "free." Music can be had for free, I give away music for free, much of the software I use is free, etc. In the ten years since Napster, has anything changed?
Nope! Bertrand and Moore are still destroying everything, yay!
The talk was pretty fascinating and Anderson is an entertaining speaker. The key takeaway for me as an artist is that once price hits zero, it's pretty much all psychology from there. As if selling music wasn't a giant head-fake already. Also, the secondary argument of whether music -- or anything digital, really -- should be free is totally moot these days, and belongs in angry comment threads where musicians who spend $20K on their recordings shout at the musicians giving away basement-recorded MP3s.
Other than that, I don't have much to offer in the way of analysis. If anything, Anderson's talk confirmed my opinion that the best thing any up-and-coming artist could do with their music is give it away.
This Friday I'll be filling on bass for geekcore band Kirby Krackle. Clever, uptempo songs about comic books and video games. And yikes, our gig is at the Showbox at the Market.
KK is a joint venture between songwriter (and former Explone bassist!) Kyle Stevens and Seattle comic shop mogul Jim Demonakos, who also organizes the Emerald City ComicCon. Jim co-writes, Kyle records and performs, and fans delight to songs about Mario Kart and Benjamin Grimm. There's a HUGE writeup of the guys in this month's Seattle Sound magazine, which I can't link to because of course they use some lame Java thing.
Anyway, we've had two weeks of rehearsal cramming to get these songs in shape and it's been a lot of fun playing these tunes. Between KK and Explone I have to say I really dig being a sideman these days.
So I finally broke down and upgraded my recording rig. Actually, my original sound card broke down first, so the decision had already been made for me!
I figured if I was gonna upgrade the card, I might was well do the whole system, which seriously bummed me out because I hate dealing with hardware and I'd rather run a piece of equipment until smoke billows out of it before spending cash to replace it.
But I got really, really lucky. I wandered into Re-PC, which basically a giant warehouse filled with recycled computer parts and stuff, and hidden against the back wall I found a like-new 3.2GHz Pentium 4 machine, with 2 GB of RAM and WinXP Pro. I figure it's someone's former gaming or media box as it also came with a crazy 7.1 sound card and DVD burner. I'm amused to think this is someone's old, slow machine chucked to the curb, but what do I know. One man's trash, etc.
Anyway, a few days later I got an M-Audio FastTrack Pro. Not a top-of-the-line model by any definition, but it has decent preamps and phantom power, and it's USB powered so there's no ugly AC adapter. It's got two inputs so I can finally (finally!) record in stereo to separate tracks like a grownup.
By the way, all the complaints about the FastTrack preamp knobs are true: positions 1 - 8 are too quiet, 9 is just right, 10 is WAY TOO MUCH. Something about how the knobs don't compensate for the logarithmic blah-blah? Anyway, trust your meters, not your headphones, I guess. Also, I had to go online to download the latest drivers; apparently "it's ASIO or nothing."
Between the new PC and the FastTrack, recording is suddenly fun again, hooray! Everything just works and sounds better. I spent the weekend installing FL Studio and Reason, hooking up MIDI stuff, and playing around with REAPER, which I'm pretty sure is going to replace Cakewalk SONAR as my multi-tracker of choice, given that the former costs way less and does everything the latter does.
Now I just need to sit back and wait for all this new gear to write a song for me to record!
In 1982, I was attending junior high in West Virginia. Despite being small and rural, our school was not immune from the Thriller mania gripping the nation.
I was one of the first kids who figured out how to moonwalk.
Other, bigger kids wanted to learn. I taught them and in return they did not beat me up.
John Riedel is biking from San Francisco to L.A. as part of the AIDS/LifeCycle 8 charity event, and he's used a few of my tunes in the videos he's posting along the way. I have to say I never envisioned "Gravel Road Requiem" playing behind scenes of bearded men in pink tutus welcoming cyclists to the Otter Pop Stop, but hey, it's a song about travelin'.
Not a solo gig, but my second gig with Explone, at the Brick Tavern in Roslyn, WA. Astute readers familiar with early 90s pop culture may recognize the Brick as the local bar from the TV series Northern Exposure. That's because it's the same bar. Well, at least I'm sure they used it for exterior shots. Roslyn is Cicely AK.
Anyway, based on Patrick's earlier experiences playing the Brick with Red Jacket Mine, we were prepared for a so-so turnout. But then three shuttles from the nearby Suncadia resort arrived earlier and disgorged 40 drunken birthday revelers. Between them, the Roslyn locals, college students from Ellensburg and a few rough-looking dudes in sleeveless tees and cowboy hats, we had a packed house without even trying all that hard. We played for an hour, Josh punched a hole in his kick drum head, and I got a rock blister. Good times. Thanks to Will Wakefield and his band for the opening slot.
Here's a little stop-motion video I made from shots Megan took during the gig:
gale-force winds mauling the trees overhead
neighborhood raccoon scooting over my fence
a bit of sprinkling rain
awesome sunset, subsiding winds
ominous clouds
ominous faces in aforementioned clouds
twilight
mysterious column of light to the northwest (probably top of Key Arena)
clearing clouds, rustling trees
neighbor teens smoking weed in nearby driveway
a few bats flitting about in the sky
the North Star
the Big Dipper
prowling cats
three pieces of orbiting space junk
one very bright meteor
mysterious howling unnervingly close by (coyote? wild dog? jackalope?)
Megan! With the keys!
It's also "double-sided" MP3 single since there's also an rocked-out electric version of "Sketches" (from his earlier EP Cold Rain) available. Them big scronky guitars are worth a listen.
Irrational anxiety aside, I have to say my gig at Folklife couldn't have gone any better. Great weather + happy, attentive crowd + mistake-free performance = yay!
Of course they still got my name wrong (the MC fixed it a bit later):
The sunshine and 70-degree temps brought out a ton of people. I had a full capacity crowd (more were crowded off to the back and sides):
Since I was playing solo I decided to be brave and pull out the looper pedal so I could accompany myself with some smack-thwap! guitar-beatboxing. The red pedal on the lower left is the LoopStation:
Overall the gig was great -- not too shabby for having not performed in seven months.
We didn't hang around hot, crowded Seattle Center very long after the show, but we did wander up to the Narrative Stage to see Nukariik perform some otherworldly-sounding Inuit throat singing:
Back home, Megan and I had a nice sunshine-y walk through the Seward Park neighborhood that ended with arugula pizza and Manny's Pale Ale at the Flying Squirrel. Highly recommended:
If we ever have to leave Seattle I'll have to find a way to bring Manny's with us, or curl up into a ball and sob.
This Saturday May 23 I'll be rolling down to Seattle Center to perform a solo show at the 2009 Northwest Folklife Festival. I'll be at the Alki Court Stage, in the breezeway west of the crazy-big International Fountain lawn.
I haven't played a solo gig since last October so yeah, I'm nervous. I know I'll get through the set just fine, but I'm out-of-practice when it comes to being witty and not saying embarrassing things between songs.
Check out the newly-redesigned Folklife website (yay, no more PDFs!) for the whole weekend schedule. Folklife is always a craaazy time, drawing thousands of people and featuring tons of performers, and that doesn't even include the kabillions of random street musicians (last year I learned quickly that I'm no match for a six-piece improv bluegrass band or an African drum ensemble). And unlike previous years, we're supposed to have fantastic, sunny, completely non-Northwest weather. Hello. summertime!
Anyway, a few days later I got an 
