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| 5/28/2003 |
| Rusty |
I'm rusty in a lot of ways lately.
I'm sore in places I forgot (or never knew) existed, two days after my first ascent of Mount Si of the year. Yeah, I know, I was supposed to take pictures, but I didn't clear it with Beta Girl, and anyway the views were blocked by a lot of clouds, so. It's not like I'm not going to do that hike a bazillion times this summer. Having not done that hike lately, I forgot that it's actually not the easiest hike in the world. Pretty danged steep, really, for four miles up, and then of course, 4 miles back down. Gets the heart going, and the blood a-pumpin'. I guess the Mount Si hike is the most popular one in Washington, but that doesn't mean it's easy. I didn't climb up the haystacks this time around, but I will when I get a camera up there.
I haven't played guitar much lately, either - which is not such a great thing. Gonna start rehearsing a live band again in a week or so, so I guess I'd better start practicing. I also need to finish up a couple of studio tracks we started in April, too. I wonder why it is that I rarely go into the studio with my chops in a reasonable state - I always seem to go in to track guitars when I haven't been practicing. Oh well. Looking forward to getting into a practice routine again, though, which should lead to more live shows.
Grunge played a gig yesterday, the first one they've ever done without me and Chris. Brian Timpe played bass for it, a much better bassist than me, since I'm not even really a bass player anyway. I'm a bass hobbyist at best. I don't know if they're going to continue as a band - Joe came out of retirement for that one show. We'll see.
Nice weather allows restaurants to set up tables outside. I hate eating outside, even when it's nice out. Bugs, sunburn, and squinting aren't things I associate with a fabulous dining experience. Of course the very best thing about the outside tables is getting to eavesdrop on the conversations as you walk to your car. There were a bunch of loud fellows sitting at an outside table in downtown Bellevue last night that I was privileged to walk past - the loudest was regaling his buddies with a tale that was all about How Drunk He Got This One Time.
It was a laugh riot. I miss winter. |
| 11:15:45 AM |
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| 5/25/2003 |
| A National Holiday |
Today is a national holiday for my generation.
A confession for you on this special day: I have never even once heard a Phish song. Not even one note. They sure are popular - are they any good? If they sound at all like the Grateful Dead, I'm not interested. I do like the fact that they have a crowd that will indulge them - in their recent Rolling Stone cover story, there was a description of an improv game they played. A huge rubber ball for each member of the band was thrown into the crowd. Each band member would focus on his ball, and improvise along with the ball's path - the musician would play a new note along with each bounce of the ball.
That is a cool idea. And like I said, it's amazing to me that a band could find a large audience willing to go along with it. Kudos to you, Phish-people. |
| 4:39:46 PM |
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| 5/23/2003 |
| Good One, Todd |
I know next to nothing about Todd Rundgren (except that he produced a really nice XTC album, Skylarking). But The Onion has a great interview with him right now, and he has an interesting idea about the future of the music biz:
The Onion: What do you think is going to happen to the music business?
Todd Rundgren: I think the following should happen: First, artists should re-emphasize performance and de-emphasize recording. You always make more money if you have a healthy performing life than you will if you have even a moderately healthy recording life. Don't make recording the most important thing you do. Make performing the most important thing you do, and then you can make recordings and sell them at your shows, because record labels aren't going to be around to help you get on the radio stations, and the radio stations probably aren't going to play you anyway. The next thing in music is going to be more like Internet radio. Then, if I were in the record business, I would start getting out of the brick-and-mortar side of it and stop thinking of music as a commodity, and start thinking of it as a service, and develop models that more resemble cable television, where you pay a monthly fee and listen to as much as you can consume. If they can manage to do that, hey, if you get a million people paying 20 bucks a month, that's $20 million a month. That's $240 million a year, just off of a million people. So I think by that model, there's plenty of money to be made, but we've got to stop worrying about bootlegging and the economies around it. Make music a service that's easy to consume, and there'll be plenty of money for everyone. |
| 1:13:09 PM |
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| 5/21/2003 |
| The Republican Matrix |
| I love Tom Tomorrow. |
| 2:06:46 PM |
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| Saved By The Apron Man |
Eeek, in danger of blog-slacking once again.
Some random thoughts about L.A. from my recent visit:
L.A. is comprised almost completely of freeways. Just driving around to do my daily whatevers, I drove close to 600 miles in a week. It is true that much of that came from being lost on the freeways, and trying to get UN-lost.
People in California drive really damn fast, all the time. I'm unused to that aggressive driving thing, living here as I do in Ultra-Polite Yuppie Paradise. Part of the reason we don't drive so fast around here is that the cops are EVERYWHERE. I didn't see one cop pulling someone over for speeding in California. I hardly saw police at all on the freeways in the Golden State. Maybe you have to be black to get pulled over or something. I wonder if Washington State Troopers are so ever-present because we don't have State Income Tax up here - perhaps they're always writing tickets up here because they have to increase revenues for State government. I don't know, but Californians drive damn fast.
I actually saw rain clouds while I was there this time. So it does in fact rain in Los Angeles at times. Go figure.
Los Angeles seems less like a "city" than it does a huge, sprawling mass of inter-connected used car dealerships. To east-coasters, it looks as if Route 1 suddenly metastatized at an alarming rate all over the place. I mean this in the best possible way.
Seattle is a lot less intimidating than L.A.
I got really lost on the freeways twice during my stay, both times at about 2:00 in the morning, driving back to my sister's in Hollywood from the studio in Pasadena. See, they had blocked the entrance to the 101 on my return path from Pasadena - and it's not like I really know any "alternate routes". Both nights I ended up driving around for about two hours before I finally managed to get back to my sister's place. Don't yell at me about asking for directions - once you're on one of those freeways, the exits are miles apart! And it was three in the morning! Who was I gonna ask?
The first night I got lost, it was pretty scary - I had somehow ended up on the 710, which I now know can put you in some areas of town that aren't the nicest. It was somewhere around there that I realized that I was almost out of gas. Somewhere in East L.A., with no cell phone, and no idea where to find an open gas station. And I'd left my sister's numbers in my stuff at the studio. Yeah, that was a real exciting moment.
Somewhere on the 710, I saw that happy symbol of American Capitalism, the golden arches, and pulled off. The McD's wasn't open, but it was well-lit, and so I parked there to gather my wits and figure out what I was gonna do. At that point the gas gauge needle was at E, and I had no idea where I was, nor how far I could go. I had my AAA card, and so I decided to use the pay phone in the McD's lot to call them and have someone bring me some gas. As I got out of my car, I noticed a truck pulling into the McD's lot, very slowly. A guy got out, and I saw him rummaging around in his front seat - keep in mind, this is somewhere around 3:00 AM, what was he doing? He eventually stood up straight, having pulled out - an apron, of all things. Which he then put on. In a McDonald's parking lot, in East Los Angeles, at 3 AM. Yeah, I don't know, either.
I got up some nerve and started towards him, and I asked if he knew where there was an open gas station nearby - I'd stopped at a couple that had been closed, and the surrounding neighborhood didn't look promising for further searching. English was obviously not The Apron Man's first language, but I was able to simplify my question enough for him to get me: "Gas station? Open?" The Apron Man pointed to the east and said, "Exxon. Five blocks."
I thanked him and jumped back in my car, and headed the way he had pointed. Five blocks according to him was a lot farther than my own pre-conceived notion of what that distance would be; I really started getting scared around then, when finally - there it was! An Exxon! And it was OPEN!
I cannot recall ever being clobbered with such a combined blast of relief and gratitude.
Thank you, Apron Man. |
| 1:20:38 PM |
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| 5/19/2003 |
| Salve Has A Release Date! At Last! |
Hey everybody!
Salve, my long-delayed second release, will be officially released to the world on June 17, 2003.
Sorry it's taken so long. I hope when it arrives in the hands of those kind enough to buy it, they'll feel it is worth their time and dollars. This is the life of the indie record maker, though - budgets and deadlines tend to be ephemeral, and hard to pin down.
But there will be no changes this time. Salve is done, printed, and will be available for pre-order from this Web site very soon. Those of you who pre-order will receive the album before the official release date, and you will have the opportunity, if you buy the album here, to get a free bonus with your order. Don't get too excited, but it might give you a chuckle or five.
I thank all of you that have been waiting around for this album. I listened to it for the first time in ages this morning and found that I like it a lot. I hope you will, too.
Reading the Blog yet? You should! |
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| 5/18/2003 |
| L.A. Pitchas |
Back in the Seattle area, boy, am I. It was HOT and hazy and sunny in LA when I left on Friday, and it was cold and rainy and blustery here when I got home last night. Quite a difference 1,100 miles makes.
I've got a LOT to write about now that I have access to a reliable PC again - but I don't have the time this very moment, so I thought I'd post some of the photos I took while down in LA-LA Land. Most of these are centered around the sessions for Beller's album.
As I mentioned previously in another entry, this message is spray-painted on the outside wall of Kevin Gilbert's Lawnmower & Garden Supplies Studio in Pasadena.
And this is the sign from which the studio takes it's name, mounted on the inside of the building, near the control room.
I took this right after I arrived at the studio on Sunday May 11. Bryan is producing guitarist Rick Musallam, visible through the control room window. In the foreground is Pro Tools Fuckin' Mastah, Edmund "Ed" Monsef. He's awesome.
Engineer Nick D'Virgilio is at left, while Rick Musallam is assisting Bryan with a weird bass part by turning both volume knobs down at a pre-determined time. Real hi-tech, but it worked.
Smoke break. Engineer Ed is talking with Bryan at left, with Rick Musallam and Wayne "DJ Gruno" Perez striking poses at right. Wayne hosts the weekly "Gruno's Guilty Pleasures" internet radio show, and was at the sessions as the documentarian. He also drilled holes in the wall.
The last one for this posting, it's some nature stuff for ya. This is Mount Shasta as viewed from a Burger King parking lot in Weed, California. I was about halfway home at this point.
That's all I got for now. More pitchas and textual stimulation about the LA journey will be forthcoming. |
| 11:46:11 AM |
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| 5/12/2003 |
| Dammit |
| Sorry about the typos in the last couple of entries - I can't seem to edit the stuff on this machine. Bear with me, OK? |
| 11:34:59 AM |
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| 1296 You Are Here |
The above title is spray painted on the brick wall on the outside of the building here at the late Kevin Gilbert's Lawnmower & Garden Supplies studio in Pasadena. I got a pitcher of it on the Beta Girl cam, I'll post it, along with some other photos from the trip when I'm back home.
So this is my second day hanging around with Beller here at Lawnmower as he works on his debut solo album View. I will be doing my tracks later this afternoon. Over my right shoulder, Beller is paging through string patches on a Korg Triton for the first stuff he'll be laying down today. Bryan and engineer/Pro Tools Fuckin' Mastah Ed are discussing the merits of the 40th identical-sounding string patch - but these things are important, ya know.
I expect that this will be another very long day, the third in a row for Beller, Ed, and Nick D'Virgilio. When I say long day, I mean long. They started up yesterday at 10:30 AM, and we left this morning at 1:30 AM. They did that the night before, and I'm sure we'll do it again tonight, and there's another day scheduled tomorrow.
Tiring pace, yes - but I was riveted all day. The amount of talent assembled on this project is tremendous, and I feel supremely lucky to even be sitting here. Yesterday was Mike Keneally's last day on the project, as all he had to do was one last B3 overdub, which he finished pretty quickly; the wonderful thing is, he hung out all the rest of the day, and offered Bryan a lot of valuable production advice when he needed it. When I arived, Rick Mussalim was in the big room, working on some guitar overdubs. Rick is just ungodly good - and we'll be playing together later today, something I'm just over the moon about. Looking around at all the gods walking around here, I couldn't do much more than thank my lucky stars and wonder what in the hell I did to deserve to be here; god-DAMN I'm a lucky boy.
Things are getting busy around here again now, and I need to go back to being a lucky fly on the wall. I'll try to post more a little later today. |
| 11:33:50 AM |
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| LA-LA Land Lullaby |
Yogi Note: I actually wrote this blog entry on Saturday, but have been unable to get near enough to a reliable computer to post it until today.
In sunny LA today. Actually, I rolled in about 8:30 last evening, having driven over twelve hours from Grant's Pass, Oregon, site of my first stop of the journey. Driving for twelve hours isn't my favorite thing, not at all, really - but the closer I got, the more it seemed silly to stop. "Heck, it's only 300 miles from here, ya know, I'm practically there!" That's the sort of things that were going through my mind, anyhow.
So, are there many things that are as fun as road-tripping? I'm trying to think of a few, but they aren't coming to me at the moment, so infused am I with the fun I've had driving down the I-5 the last couple of days. Previously, my furthest sojourn down the coast by car ended at Eugene, Oregon. Since Eugene is surrounded by flat and unremarkable farmland, I assumed that that's how all of Oregon looked - and gee, I was pretty ding-danged incorrect! Turns out southern Oregon is actually quite mountainous and foresty in that spectacularly Northwestern fashion - I felt right at home.
In Oregon, you aren't allowed to pump your own gas. That's just odd. I felt sort of rude ordering that attendant fellow around (still in high school I'm sure), but I guess that's just what you do in Oregon.
I stayed overnight, as I previously mentioned, in Grant's Pass. Beautiful area, reminds me of home in Snoqualmie, but Grant's Pass is even smaller and more remote - without a nearby urban center like Seattle is to Snoqualmie. I got to town early enough to go catch a movie at the cinema, though timing dictated what I could actually watch: which turned out to be Confidence. I can't recommend it, even though the unbelievably hot Rachel Weisz is in it. Dustin Hoffman is doing one of those hammy supporting parts that Al Pacino had been cornering the market on, and he's just as bad at it as Al was. But hey, it was a road movie, and so in that sense I enjoyed it anyway.
Left Grant's Pass about 8 AM on Friday, and it wasn't long before I crossed into Northern California. Hit some really dense fog in that really Tall Mountain Pass At The End Of Oregon Whose Name Now Escapes Me, tried out the fog lights on the new ride. I don't know if they worked, because there was enough daylight peeking through illuminating the fogginess to make it all confused-like.
Soon after that drove past Mount Shasta, which surprised me by being directly next to the highway. I mean, right up on it. The top of the mountain was obscured by cloud cover. I guess I'm used to mountains like Rainier and St. Helen's, which always seem so distant as you drive past.
So then it turns out that California is the state that's made up of flat farmland, something like 600 miles of it. But I've never seen it, and I had a bunch of new mix CD's to listen to, and I was on a ROAD TRIP! Yeah!
So, I'm here in LA now, and it's beauteous out. Got a message in to the Beller-man, I imagine I'll hook up with him later today. Tomorrow and Monday are scheduled to be studio days. That should be some kinda fun. And then I get to chill here for a couple of days, one of which will be spent riding very fast roller coasters I'm told. And then another day will be spent anticipating watching the new Matrix movie at Mann's Chinese.
These are good days. |
| 11:15:45 AM |
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| 5/7/2003 |
| T-Minus, Like, A Day, Or Something |
Getting ready to get my arse outta Dodge, and on the road to Los Angeles. Making lists of things to take, lists of things to not forget, lists of phone numbers I might need.
So, obviously, while I'm gone, I'll be posting here even less frequently than I normally do. But my sister in LA does have Web access, so I'll try to get some thoughts in here and there - any pictures will have to wait until I get back.
Road trips are a great excuse to make a bunch of new mix CD's. |
| 11:34:50 AM |
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| 5/5/2003 |
| Thwarted |
"Anti-Rain Dances" don't seem to do any good. It rained all weekend up in the mountains, so I didn't make it up Mount Si. It'll have to wait until I get back from Los Angeles. I suppose I'll survive the disappointment.
Did you guys go see X2 this weekend? |
| 11:25:00 AM |
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| 5/2/2003 |
| Ecks, Too |
The recent spate of Marvel Comics movies has really thrown me into a bit of personal timewarp. Somewhere around the time I was 4 or 5 years old, my Dad introduced me to comic books. I fell under their spell immediately, and I was the "librarian" and steward of my Dad's collection that today numbers in the thousands. I spent untold hours drawing superhero pictures growing up - my love of those characters and stories stoked my interest in art. I continued to read comics pretty regularly into well into my high school years.
And for the most part, we (by "we" I mean my Dad) bought the Marvel books - not the D.C. Comics titles. No copies of Batman and Superman at our house, though we did get the giant-size cross-over one-shot "Superman Vs. Spider-Man" book.
And it seemed that it was always the D.C. heroes who got their own TV shows, movies, and the like. While Superman remains one of my favorite childhood nostolgia flicks, I was always disappointed that my favorite heroes, whose stories I knew so well, never got their shot on the big screen. So seeing all these Marvel heroes on the screen like we have the last few years - it takes me back. I'm really grateful, as a fan of these characters, and these stories.
X2 - X-Men United is a better-than-average entry in the now rapidly growing Marvel Films catalog. In fact, I loved the movie, but I think it may be because I know the characters so well; I gotta wonder how it'll play to those who don't know the X-Men minutae like I do. I came of age right at about the time the X-Men became The Biggest Comic Title In The World, and it's amazing to see some of these people on the big screen, come to life. In X2, it's Nightcrawler. Completely amazing characterization. Fantastic combination of perfect casting and make-up and talent. And it's so cool, after all these years, to actually hear what a "BAMF!" sounds like.
And of course, the chill-inducing moments for me were the hints at Jean Grey's future as Phoenix/Dark Phoenix. That storyline remains one of the greatest in comic lore, and I've never forgotten it. The setup for it in X2 is pretty faithful, though the circumstances are slightly different. If the next X-Men movie is going to go into that territory, I hope they don't botch it - that's sacred ground to a lot of us old fans.
I'll tell you, it sure makes me more excited for X3 than I'd imagined I'd be. Bring on Hulk in the meantime. |
| 7:08:20 PM |
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| Bridge Of Si's |
If it doesn't start raining this weekend, I think it's time for my inaugural hike up to the top of Mount Si for the new year. For the trivia lovers amongst you, Mount Si played the role of "Peak #1" many years ago on David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. Actually, you never actually saw the other peak, only Mount Si, so. It's a four mile hike to the top, starting around 520 feet above sea level; at the top it's something like 4,100 feet. Not Everest, but a pretty steep hike.
I don't like to go up that mountain when it rains, 'cuz last Labor Day it poured and I slipped on wet rocks on the way down, landing my large ass rather indelicately on a very hard and sharp rock. The resulting bruised tailbone hurt every day for a month after that. In fact, I had resolved to go to the doctor if it hadn't suddenly stopped bothering me, and you know us males: we never go to the doctor.
I'm not really in any kind of shape to go up the mountain, but neither was I on my very first ascent last summer. You'll want to pray for me. I'll try to nab Beta Girl's digital camera for some blog pics. Now I'm off to do an "anti-rain" dance. |
| 1:25:42 PM |
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| 5/1/2003 |
| Happy 7th Birthday to Wonky.Net! We're Itching Over Here! |
It seems impossible to me, but it is in fact true... today marks the seventh birthday of this Web site.
I started goofing around with making Web pages in late 1995, and eventually hit upon the idea of chronicling my musicial adventures in this new medium, and the first version of the Web site was finished and posted on May 1, 1996.
Wow. It's just hard for me to believe it's been that long already... and then again, what's really striking is how different things are in only the last, say, ten years or so. Ten years ago I had my first ever CD come out, and back then CD's were still these shiny, almost mystical creations - unlike today when I can burn one in five minutes myself. Today, CD's are disposable, or at least CDR's are. Ten years ago, I had never even heard of the World Wide Web. Had you?
I won't even hazard a guess as to what's going to be going on ten years from now - if it's anything like this last decade, life will be both similar and completely unlike anything I could have expected. I think that's fantastic.
So what's up for the site then, now that it's seven years old? Lots of updates in the pipeline, if I can ever get to them. There's been a few of late, my fave being the Blog. That's been really fun, and it's where most of my writing has been going. Salve is finally truly coming out, and there will be some stepped up activity here upon its release, but that will also be spread out among some of the other sites under the "Wonky Umbrella" that I'm working on.
If you're reading this, thank you. It's a nice day. |
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