christmastime is here

wow, i'm pretty bad about posting up on here.

christmas time is here again, happiness and cheer again, to paraphrase the amazing vince guaraldi tune. and like charlie brown in that christmas classic, i don't like the gross commercialisation of christmas. really bugs me. i mean, we were seeing christmas commercials at the top of november. i was sick of them by thanksgiving! so sometimes it ends up taking me a bit longer to get into the christmas spirit.

lexi and i are staying home this year, and we're having a great time so far. of course it's always great to spend the holidays with the folks -- jennifer and munk headed down yesterday to visit the parents and jim, our brother -- but this year we thought we'd avoid the nutty travel that inevitably comes with travel over the holidays. last year it took us 6 hours to get out of new jersey en route to long island! so anyway our plan is to go down in a couple of weeks, still see the family and have a good time but avoid that part of traveling when everyone else is doing so.

yesterday we went out on an unsuccessful quest to best buy for a tv -- the one we wanted was out of stock -- and so we grabbed some dinner at longhorn's and then saw Night At The Museum. ended up being a very fun trip! i thought the movie had a rather long-ish setup process, but it more than made up for it. stiller is always funny, and wilson was great as well. mickey rooney and dick van dyke, too! and who knew that dick van dyke could still move like that, too? there was a little clip over the credits where rooney, van dyke and bill cobbs are dancing, and van dyke was so smooth.



i can't get enough of ricky gervais lately. that guy is just so funny. i could've used more of him in the movie. he was rather like john ritter's character in Noises Off, unable to fully... you know... he leaves all of his... right?

we had the first funf listening party last week. what a great time. lexi cooked up some great food, much wine was had, and lexi baked enough pies for each funfer to go home with one. plus, all the music we had sounded great! basically, each person starts a track in their studio and sends it off to one of the others. that person adds what they feel and can otherwise manipulate, alter or dismember and send it on to the next person, and so on. once each person had the track, it was done. so you have no idea what is going to happen once it leaves your hand (unless you're the last one!), and this is compounded by the fact that everyone in the group is a multi-instrumentalist. we're planning an EP release for january.

all the best for a great holiday!

brushes with greatness

the other day while talking to lexi, i somehow got onto the topic of my time doing technical support at motu. i was there for about two or three years and still maintain friendships with people i worked with. it was a lot of fun, and i'm still a big supporter of their products. captain digital performer over here, you know?

so anyway, i was relating a bit of my adventures. you never knew who or what was coming down the line when you answered. it could've been some music bigwig, it could've been some kid in his bedroom. could be some kid in his bedroom who only sounds like a bigwig, and could be some bigwig who just happens to sound like a super-green kid with new toys.

the phone rings this time, and i'm puttering around chatting with the caller, a slightly hoarse sounding guy who seemed to be at the edges of his patience but was keeping his control and maintaining pleasantries despite the fact that his shit don't work. hence the reason he's calling tech support.

that was probably the biggest thing not to like about doing tech support. no one calls tech support when they're happy and things are working and all is right in the world. the people that are doing that are just wasting your time and probably don't have anything else to do. you hope you're going to have them happy and working when they hang up, but every single time the phone rang, it was a little aural cue that you were facing a hill. you're about to find out how steep and how high that hill is as well as how easy the terrain is. just gotta answer the phone and be ready for anything.

so i'm taking this guy through the procedures for testing what the issue is. this was a few years ago, so we're dealing with probably mac OS 7.5 or so on a just-pre-powermac computer. nothing's adding up. we try this, we try that. each test finds his patience a little thinner and his grip a little weaker. it is also gradually revealed that he's in a studio (not a bedroom or garage) with an engineer and a producer. okay.

finally, after what feels like 20 minutes of going back and forth and up and down and six ways from sunday, i come to the conclusion that an updated version of the MIDI OS would solve the problem. he begrudgingly accepts this resolution, despite it concluding their work for the night.

"let me pull up our database and i'll get that disk right out to you." it's amazing that this is just a few years ago but it sounds so dark ages, no? disks? in the mail?

"sure."

"okay, what's your last name?"

"zevon."

fuck. seriously, how many 'zevon's can there be making music? i quickly do the math in my head, and it doesn't look good. despite my thoughts, i maintain professionalism.

"okay... and, first name?"

"warren."

you gotta be kidding me. i've been unable to solve the werewolf of london's performer issue and get him rolling and off the phone happy. great.

anyway, he was eventually working fine. but this wasn't one of my better support calls, and that's probably why it sticks out in my head. well, that and 'cause it was warren freakin' zevon.


maybe another time i'll tell you about the time i did support for juan croucier from ratt. or how i came to be thanked on a slaughter album.

like i said, i had a good time working there. one day they sent me off to the NAMM convention in anaheim. my first night, after spending a day helping set up the booth and stuff, i was hanging at the very crowded hilton lobby bar. tons of people. i couldn't believe it.

over at the bar i notice trevor rabin. now, if you know me, you know i love me some yes. i never really got into Big Generator, but 90125 had some great stuff all over it. so, you know... "holy crap, that's trevor rabin!"

then i notice that he's talking to jim and ralph, two other guys from motu. jim sees me and waves me over, and before i know it i'm drinking with trevor.

at the end of the night, trevor's got his arm around me at the bar and he's slurring "i gotta get HOME. my WIFE is gonna KILL me!"

later that trip i met, much more briefly, tony levin. i shook his hand hoping that some of his excessive bass playing talents would brush off on me. musical improvement through osmosis.

i'm not sure, but it may have worked!

rehearsals and studio work

so this past weekend David hauled a bunch of his gear over and we spent an evening swimming in sound. lots of ambient guitar layers, percolating rhythms, propulsive bass and some voices from the other side of the world. it's going to take some sculpting now to shape it into something great, but it's definitely got some potential (if not commercial). i keep thinking along the lines of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, that great, great 1981 record from Brian Eno and David Byrne. we also did some sampling of the djembe, doumbek, udu and tambourine. i'll have to edit those files up and throw them into the sampler. we'll definitely be doing it again. i think there's a record or two in this collaboration, at least.

last night was the first (!) Larry Banilow rehearsal for the thursday show, and there were some exciting developments. in the dusting off of old Banilow favourites, we happened upon a couple of things that surprised even us as we were playing them. a couple of those "wow, that was awesome and cool... we should do that in the show!" moments. and of course, the Banilow rehearsal/ recording session staple: almost perpetual side-splitting laughter.

if it ain't fun, why bother, right? and this shit is way fun. i hope you can make it out to the show. you ain't seen nothing like it.

it's december!

to paraphrase my friend roman in those new citibank commercials, i've been dragging this week, beeg time!

as you know, this past sunday, Larry Banilow had that radio performance, and the late night really knocked me off my game for the week.

last night we went to see Voodoo Screw Machine do their beatles tribute night, Beat the Meatles. i almost didn't make it out, but i couldn't miss it. saw lots of friends that i hadn't seen in awhile, and that's always a good thing.

i'm very excited about that new Banilow tune, Pillow Time (check it out on our myspace site, if you haven't already). there's another, too, waiting in the wings. it's called Sundae Smile, and we expect it to be premiered on Bay State Rock this weekend. we're hoping, anyway. we killed off about an hour of time on their airwaves this past sunday, so they might wish to use the time this week on other worthy bands/ artists.

tomorrow i'm in the studio with unguitarist (his wonderful term) David Kirkdorffer. we're not sure what will happen, and that's precisely why we're both so excited about it. we've been talking for years about getting together to experiment and lay down some tracks. i'm glad we're finally doing it. he's a great talent with an interesting approach, and he, like me, thrives on the unknown and unexpected. i think it'll be a good match, and i think the music that comes out of it will be interesting and fun.

at the very least, we'll have a really good time hanging out and making sounds!

then next week is the Larry Banilow prep for the show. did i mention we're playing a show December 7th at the Lizard? yeah? cool. just wanted to make sure.

if you come out, i guarantee that it'll be revarding. very, very, very revarding!