The Subway Rambler (Online)

More or Less More

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:08:00 +0000

Been attempting to gear up for recording, which (if you'll recall) is a big part of this year's creative agenda. That is, the agenda is to actually be creative, which can sometimes fall by the wayside when you're focusing on other things. One of the things about recording, though - while I've done plenty of the 'one man band' types of things that multitrack recording allows, I find these days I much prefer producing music as a collaborative activity.

And there's the rub: all of my collaborators have schedules that I - and they - could only describe as 'insane.' One of the predictable byproducts of the recession is how much more companies are trying to get out of their current stable of employees, and with Edz, the drummer for both the Tappan Sea and Dave solo stuff (same person, of course) currently working nights and Saturdays, the actual creative agenda for the year hasn't quite been able to get off the ground.*

I've been able to use the time to get my own stuff in order - polishing off songs that have sat with unwritten lyrics; sussing out the pool of musicians to get some nice instrumental overdubs when the time comes; etc. But at some point, you need the energy that comes from actually starting work, and I'm itchy. No doubt about it.

Anyway, Edz will become available in a couple of weeks, and I'm also going to track a few of the solo songs with Sean on drums shortly, so that's sorting itself out. Oddly, I've always found strong drummers easy to come by. It's the lack of available guitar players that's always been my achilles' carpal tunnel syndrome. What's that about?

D.

*A note of explanation, if you need: drums generally come first in multitrack recording.

Well Day

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:16:00 +0000

Took the day off from work this morning - was not feeling well, and figured that one of the benefits of being a full-timer is that I now don't have to risk getting other people sick. Corporations like freelancers for the obvious reason that they save them money on benefits and the like, but a way that freelancers cost companies money is in the fact that since a freelancer gets paid hourly and doesn't get paid if they don't work - no paid sick days, in other words - a freelancer is way more likely to show up to work if they're sick, and then get all of their co-workers sick.

It's all about man-hours, people.

Back in 2010, there was a freelancer who came in complaining that her husband had some viral infection that wouldn't go away and doctors couldn't quite identify it. Then she proceeded to come in for the next few days with an increasingly alarming cough that gradually evolved into a full-on hacking one. And she was in the cube next to mine, which put me in a dilemma - if I got as sick as she was, would I also insist on coming in, seeing as how Yesenia and I were both working through spotty part-time work at that point? The answer is a resounding yes.

Thankfully, I didn't catch it, and I didn't have to make that choice. Today I can make the more ethical choice, which, if you extrapolate out to a silly degree, probably proves the idea that moral standards are a luxury of the rich, and everyone else just has to play along.

D.

Obama Over the Rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Thu, 10 May 2012 02:42:00 +0000

If this isn't an historical day, I'm not sure what would constitute as such: the President of the United States expressing support for gay marriage. Yes, you can say that it's a long way from doing anything about it, and yes, it comes a day after North Carolina has amended their constitution to explicitly ban it. But it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

D.

Suckfest '95

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 06 May 2012 03:41:00 +0000

Your Weekend Listening
"Empty House"
ca. 1995

A few entries back, I mentioned that I came across a treasure trove (well, some kind of trove) of old four-tracks, from 2000-thereabouts. Sadly, this isn't from that. I haven't yet gotten the energy together to spin up the old Tascam Porta-One and the Alesis Multimix Firewire 16-channel. Also, I haven't gotten drunk enough yet.

Those recordings were pretty good - some interesting, quirky songs that showed the mix of influences I'd had on my writing in the last half of the 90's, decent enough playing and engineering that at least showed a minimal awareness of what EQ ranges might not curdle one's tympanic membrane.

Today's entry shows none of that. It's a shitty song with lousy playing and engineering that checks every single box on the 'How Not to Engineer a Home Recording' list. But I present it here as a reminder of how you can delude yourself into feeling that the work that you're producing at this moment - any moment - is worth your time.

The best weapon against not sucking for posterity is to find a way to apply some kind of objective criteria. Measure yourself against it. Is the beat iffy? Is the guitar out of tune? Are the lyrics insipid? Is the mic, as they say, 'hot'? You've got ears and a brain - use them, and don't be afraid to give yourself a hard time.

I don't really have anything of interest to say about the song itself. I had completely forgotten or purged the memory of its existence until a couple of years ago, when I was importing a bunch of old four-tracks from Ansley and Bran from 1995 or so, and this turned up in-between a couple of their songs, buried deep in a decaying cassette master.

The only real shame is that whatever minor listenability the song might have had is completely hampered by the godawful engineering. The reason that piercing electric guitar drowns out the mildly inoffensive acoustic is that they had been bounced onto the same track, and the effects were live to tape, so there's no un-crapping it. Ditto the overdriven vocal. Just basic issues of setting levels, not even dealt with. I suspect that even when it was fresh, I didn't think much of it, given the half-assedness of it and the fact that I never mixed it down.

So, that's now rectified - but as a warning to myself, not a presentation for you. Feel free to listen. I challenge you to enjoy.

D.

P.S.: Christ, but that bridge is awful.

The Thoughts of Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:54:00 +0000

Really don't have much on the brain today - Yesenia had drinks in the city with a friend, and when she got home, we had a late dinner of pancakes and sausage. Pancakes and sausage at 8:30 PM on a Monday - it's the type of thing you only do if you're an adult or if you're a kid in a John Hughes movie.

Right now, we're tangled on the couch, with me blogging (obviously) and Yesenia crocheting yet another in her insanely good baby blankets. When she does so, she occasionally sings and hums little snippets of Spanish music. Add that in with the digesting breakfast/dinner, and it's all very good for feeling completely content, but probably not so good for spurring the mind into thoughts worth recording.

And, yes - the sausage was vegetarian, of course. Even when I did eat meat, I never did like sausage, so I can honestly say that this stuff is way better than the real thing. Mostly, meat substitutes fail when they try to be like meat, but let's face it - the stuff that's in real sausage is far enough away from actual meat for the most part that going that extra step and leaving meat behind altogether is a plus.

If you try it, I strongly recommend the chipotle.

D.

Sunday, Muddy Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:45:00 +0000

One of the things I like about life in the suburbs is the rhythm (or rut) that you fall into when you've managed to tamp down a lot of the bigger problems. Yes, it's always nice to have a schedule, sometimes to distract from aggravation, sometimes to give form to aimlessness, sometimes to allow you to prioritize time when time itself is a rare commodity. But there's a special kind of pattern that emerges when you don't have too much to do and you don't have to bury yourself in freelance work to make ends meet, or anything else that adds negative energy to your life.

Yesterday was a good case in point. The master bedroom is certainly a major project that needs to be finished (for the record, initial demolition on the room started around this time last year, so it's been officially too long). We're at the plastering stage, and it's obviously the kind of work that's more tedious and time-consuming than it is difficult. But tedious and time-consuming aren't a real problem for me - it's experiencing them solo. Standing on a ladder for hours ladling goop on the ceiling with only the radio for company is a drag.

So I finally thought to ask people to come and help me complete it. Sean Scorsone was the first of invitees to donate his time, and there are currently two more lined up (Jim and Karl) - not quite enough to finish it, but enough people and man-hours to get over a big hump of crap. And it was actually fun, in that whitewash the fence kind of way.

Afterwards, Bran came by and Yesenia cooked pizza and the four of us ate, and drank and kibitzed and then the three musicians jammed for a little while. And it was just a good evening. Homemade pizza is the new Saturday tradition, and I always enjoy eating, drinking and jamming, in no particular order. And today is the laundry and housecleaning day - housecleaning and laundry float from Friday to Sunday, depending on what else needs to be done.

And everything is nice and relaxed and fun. Soon, we're heading out to buy (among other things) new cushions for the porch chairs so that the Summerporch can begin. Which is niceness and relaxedness and fun given physical form.

Summer breeze makes me feel fine, don't you know. With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard - now, everything is easy because of, etc.

D.

I Wuz Here

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:15:00 +0000

So, I got this in the inbox, yesterday:

You are receiving this message because your email address is associated with an unmigrated legacy Blogger account. As we announced in April of last year, legacy accounts will no longer be accessible after May 30th, 2012 unless they are updated to the Google Account system. Any blog content associated with this account will also be unmodifiable after that date.

Etc. Which is fine. It's Google's free blogging software, and Google is primarily in the business of data-farming, and it's obviously much harder for them to farm data from email addresses that aren't provided by them - at least harder legally, if not technically. They're Google, they can do pretty much anything on the internet that's possible to do. They built the place, after all.

Thing is, the account the Rambler is currently tied to is my account from the old Copper Man website, which has since become my own website, for reasons having more to do with legacy and laziness than anything tangible and practical. So when Google comes and says 'you can't login as Copper Man, anymore,' it seems like much more of a personal statement, if not an outright affront.

Is it silly to be more iffy about the idea of having my login change to a Google account for personal reasons than for issues of privacy? Maybe. There was a time when it would have been the other way around, but I guess I've started to adopt the millennial mindset about the new notion of privacy and online identity.

If you need that spelled out for you, it's that people my age and older are generally more suspicious (and quite rightly) about both the blatant and subtle loss of privacy that comes with the age of digital/social networking. People who are younger are more interested in finding ways to somehow stand out in the stream, and for people who are even younger, the idea of privacy, and increasingly, ownership of content, is falling into the past.

One of the new tools that Google is offering - Drive, an online file-sharing/cloud service similar to Dropbox - has as one of its agreement points wording that implies that whatever you upload there, Google has the right to use. Wording and discussion here. It reads more like a Creative Commons copyright line than anything else.

This is the world we're in, now, rather than the world where everybody busts a blood vessel when John Lennon is used to advertise Nikes. It's all grist for the mill, and I suppose Blogger, like Facebook and every other social networking site in which I participate can claim some sort of ownership of the content I've created over the years. I've never not known this. So why should I care if the name and the little creative avatar I've defined for myself digitally is no longer the literal key to this door through which I communicate with the world?

D.

I'll Have What I'm Having

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:29:00 +0000

The last two or three days have been highlighted - more like lowlighted - by a huge wave of enervation. Which actually may be the result of an outside agency, and not just me getting mopey. Most likely, it's the pollen. Either that, or I've suddenly got mono, which would be really odd. I can't remember - does mono leave you glassy-eyed and feeling like you're just one sneeze away from either waking up or going to sleep at any moment?

Yesterday, I woke up when I heard Yesenia leaving for work, but 'woke up' is far too strong and definitive a term for what actually happened, which was more like slowly seeping into my body from somewhere else and not quite being able to operate it properly. I tried to say 'love you,' but couldn't even muster a grunt. Now that's beat.

Hopefully, it will pass in time for the weekend. Not that I've got anything going on, but I hate to be sick on a weekend just on principle.

D.

Shedding Skin

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:57:00 +0000

Today is a pretty eventful chapter in Spring Cleaning 2012 - to the point where this year's cleaning is turning out to be the largest decision pool of stuff being removed probably since we moved into Beadboard Manor a little under 10 years ago.

On today's docket is the cleaning of Yesenia's closet and dresser, which had gotten to the point where we could no longer find a place to put any of the clean clothes once folded and/or hangered. Which isn't to say that my own wardrobe couldn't stand a purging, but while mine is merely bulging, Yesenia's was knocking out rivets and through drawer bottoms.

It's also a little easier for me to find space my stuff, since I do all the laundry. With Yesenia's clothes, I'm already a a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to deciding where things go. But that's moot, since there's no space left for things to go anywhere, anyhow, so even if I decided to start hanging t-shirts and wadding up corduroy skirts with the socks, I couldn't follow through.

We're at the completely emptied out point, with all of the keep/toss/donate decisions taken care of, and the donated clothes sitting in bags by the front door. The shoes have gone back into the closet, and next up is the most tedious task of putting everything else away.

D.

Hating to be Right

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:56:00 +0000

Well, the third major bit of malware in just a few weeks has turned up for Macs, and I'm philosophical about it. It wasn't that it was necessarily hubristic of Apple to use the lack of viruses and virus-like things on the Mac to sell them, but in typical Apple fashion, the selling went beyond the obvious point and tried to make some universal, unchanging truth out about it. "Mac's don't get viruses, and never will!", went the ad. Okay. I didn't believe it then, and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, presumably brought by the chickens when they came home to roost.

Oh, and the 'obvious point' being that the primary reason Windows machines were targeted while Macs weren't was that Macs only represented about 5% of the worldwide market at the time, and Microsoft was the big evil giant. Now, even though Mac hasn't really gained much PC market share, Apple has become such a dominant tech leader and done enough of the other kind of stuff that pisses off hackers that we are a target. Yay?

It's certain to drop off as Apple moves away from making computers to being a manufacturer of consumer mobile devices and similar things. It's not a big surprise - they've created the market so they could dominate it, and it will be the close of a long game they were playing, starting with their release of iTunes in January of 2001. In many ways, Apple was leveraging their hardcore supporters to bring in new ones, but what's the point of a business if it can't grow? I'm largely unmoved by the as-yet realized potential of their iPhone/iPad things, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the complete brilliance of the decade-long set-up and pitch salesmanship that Jobs and Co. ran. It's not the long con, since they delivered the future they promised.

Presumably the endgame features something close to a completely curated web experience, one that minimizes time spent outside of services and entertainment provided by the App Store and iTunes and iBooks and whatever else there is. I think that's the part of the plan that won't really ever be realized, especially with Jobs out of the picture, and it also means that the mobile devices will be prime targets for hackers.

Sure, they'll still keep making computers, but their market will be focused on the core users that kept them going all those years, high-end creative professionals. I actually maintain hope that they'll start breaking the iPads out into class, much like their current computers, with a consumer-friendly model and a maxed-out professional version. An iPad will only be of use to me if I can create on it with the same tools and same ease as the current five-year-old laptop I'm writing this on, but I suspect it's going to be awhile.

In the meantime, I'll play malware dodge'em, and try not to click 'okay' on weird popups.

D.

Here

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:20:00 +0000

Weekends heading into Spring are still an adjustment. Away from the nesting instinct of Fall and Winter, but still not quite driven by the desire to get out and absorb all of the vitamin D and ultraviolet radiation your body can handle. Being as I'm whiter than white and already have things on me that I should get a good dermatologist to look at, I try to stay as much out of the sun as possible even when I'm in it. But we're not at that time of the year, yet.

So today is a day of more cleaning, inside and out, and a time when the two divided spaces seem to blend a bit. The plants went out to the porch, and the windows were opened. The laundry went up on the line for the first time this year, and were it not for the threat of possible rain and the clouds blotting much of the direct sunlight, they'd come in all completely dry. As it is, the t-shirts and blouses and even the jeans all were dry to the touch after an hour - just those heavier clothes and some synthetics take more time to dry. That's okay - a quick tumble in the dryer on what they call the 'touch-up cycle' and we're good to go.

Some people take Spring more seriously, I suppose. Yesenia is having a last local visit with a couple that's pulling up and moving to Asheville, North Carolina. Which, by the way, looks fucking beautiful. I'll have to see if we can take a drive there sometime. The South is kind of starting to open up in that way - as time passes, more and more friends and acquaintances have spread themselves out down the Eastern seaboard.

But that's a trip for a future Spring. The time frame that Spring seems most in tune with is 'now.' Fall is about the past, and Winter is about the future, but Spring and Summer have the retention and judgement of a small child - everything is happening for the first time, and it will only go on forever.

D.

Cage Match

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:40:00 +0000

In preparation for the half-takeover of the basement by my father and stepmother, dad and I went a couple of rounds about how the space should be laid out and such. Thing is, our differences aren't that great, but it feels like we're almost prepared to argue going in to it, so argue we must. Anyway, the arguing was mild as such things go, and I'm pretty confident that everyone is going to get what they want out of this... which, paradoxically, is what I want.

D.

Old Time Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:49:00 +0000

I've often wondered why Christians don't make a bigger fuss about the portrayal of Easter in the public sphere, the way we always hear talk about 'The War on Christmas,' or endless rants about how the true meaning of Christmas is lost under all the tinsel and Santa stuff.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Easter more important than Christmas in Christian theology? It's not like people are worshiping Christ because He managed to be born - no matter how that's presented in scripture, just being born isn't all that big a deal. Sure, it's a miracle, but it's the same miracle that every single other person who ever lived has also pulled off. On top of that, being born just kind of happens to you, whether you choose it or not.

The Easter holiday, on the other hand, features a whole slew of impressive bits, from stunning acts of heroism and self-sacrifice to outright resurrection from the dead. And everything that the religion is all about is tied up in the three day window of Good Friday to Easter - Jesus died for the sins of all mankind and then actually came back from the dead to show His disciples that death itself had been conquered, and that all who believed in Him would similarly be granted an eternal life in paradise.

Without Easter, in other words, Jesus was just some guy. With it, He becomes the central icon in a religion that's gone two-plus millennia and counting. After all, the symbol of the whole religion, regardless of sect, is the cross, not the manger. So why don't Christians get more bent out of shape about the most holy day on their calendar being reduced to a fucking bunny delivering chocolate eggs in a basket followed by some mediocre ham?

D.

Weekend Unlistening

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 04:23:00 +0000

I have a few things on deck that should make for cool listening/viewing over the next few weeks, but nothing ready to go just yet. The video is still in edit mode, and the other stuff needs to make the jump from magnetic tape to the digital age, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed to tackle that, right now - the big question is if I take the old mixdown as-is, or if I hunt through the poorly labelled archives to find the original 4-track masters? Yes, the sound would improve somewhat, but I'm not even sure if I have a functioning Tascam left.

There's also the issue of it being more of a distraction from my current project(s), and I am so very good at distracting myself.

D.

Clicka Clicka Clicka

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 02:55:00 +0000

This has been the day of cleaning, both analog and virtual. We had originally planned for John and GF Johanna to come by for dinner, but they ended up canceling around 2 PM. It worked out well, though: we used the 'oh shit, company!' energy to get the house cleaned up - including my office, hopefully for an arranging that sticks. Plus, we still went ahead with the planned dinner for just the two of us - Yesenia made a kick-ass bread pudding from a Christmas-gifted panettone, and then we made our usual pizzas. Our method is that I make the dough, and Yesenia makes the sauce and prepares the pies. It's kind of our no-fail system, and indeed, the two pies were excellent as always.

In between all that - and while doing all the laundry, to boot - I decided that the time had finally come to work on a long-delayed project and set to gathering the necessary files. Since it's a video file, I needed to clear space on the Manputer, at its usual high premium - about 15 GB left. No problem, said I, I'll just back a bunch of shit up to my external drive.

Oho. External drive turns out to only have about 25 GB free out of 500. So, the video project morphs first into file triage - backing up very low priority files onto DVD and deleting from the external drive, and then organizing all of the files on the computer drive, moving to the external and then deleting the originals.

After that, it's just a matter of moving the video and audio files to the computer, and...

...hmmmph. 28 GB free. Probably not enough space. The problem is, the next step is digging into my iTunes and iPhoto to see that everything there has been backed up in both locations, and then deleting off my local drive. That will actually only clear up another 32 GB, so I may have to start considering removing some applications from the Manputer.

Anyway, like all creative endeavors, there's seemingly and endless number of impediments to starting to work. About the only thing I can use to console myself is that while the impediments are, as usual, self-created, at least they're real and not merely of the mental variety.

Okay. Off to it.

D.
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BTW: Addendum on yesterday's Weekend Listening - turns out that I must have posted it at some point, and then taken it down some time after the fact (unless Christine found a way to make comments on an unposted blog, which, knowing Google, well...). I can only guess at the reasons, but it's likely that either a) it was getting spammed like crazy, and I thought that unposting and reposting might take care of that, or, more probably, b) I took it down to upgrade the media player and hit technical difficulties and never bothered to deal with it. Which would be JUST like me.

The Vacation Before Last

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 04:17:00 +0000

As promised, here's the unposted and unedited Weekend Listening from the archives. Note that all references to dates are from July of 2008.

Your Weekend Listening • 8/2/08
Fearless • July,2008

Just to throw the last Weekend Listening (with its ultracrap and hypertense recording at an expensive studio) into sharp contrast, this week's entry shows what you can do if you're relaxed, among friends, and have just a MacBook with a pinhole mic and Garageband at your disposal.

As regular readers might recall, over the July Fourth weekend, I drove up to Durham, Maine, to spend the weekend with Putnam at his (actual) log cabin. Putnam is something of an inspiration for me - he's putting a lot of effort into promoting himself, and just recently finished a small tour of New England cafés and college radio stations, with just himself and his antique banjo, mandolin and guitar. All right - the guitar is new, but the banjo and mandolin were handed down from his great-grandfather, and that's pretty cool.

Honestly? I don't think I can even tell you my great-grandfather's name. On either side. And the most embarrassing part of that my middle name is my maternal great-grandfather's last name, so I should really be more up on that. But family history in my family is a mostly neglected category.

Putnam, on the other hand, comes from American longevity going back to - I guess - the Mayflower. Perhaps as a result, he's come to identify himself through the musical forms of the century before last - Old Time music, as it's properly called. Although he's really a singer-songwriter, he's part of a larger community of players, and even participates in a weekly old-time jamboree, which I joined in and thoroughly sucked eggs on before I drove back to New York.

A large part of what I envy in Putnam is that he's living the life, a pretty free life in which he's able to donate as much time to his music as he can. Another part is that he's doing it himself, and he's definitely earned it. It also doesn't hurt that he married a girl I had a serious crush on in college - which is actually how I know him. So, in a way, I have a small dream of being Putnam, sometimes.

I'm a songwriter first, and that even though I lack any kind of acoustic technique or stage-presence, I have that dream of getting up on stage with a guitar, keeping the crowd interested with my life set to music, and then moving on to the next town. So, when the idea first came up for me to go to Maine and accompany Putt at one of his shows, it reminded me of that and I began to noodle around on acoustic for the first time in a while. I spent a couple of hours here and there noodling around with songs from the entire Dave oeuvre - whatever I thought could translate well to just me and a guitar.

It wasn't that easy, because I tend to think in arrangements, and it's rare that any of the newer (read: better) songs that I've either written or co-written can just be banged out on acoustic and have the same impact. This is particularly true of the DeSk numbers, which are so perfectly balanced between the individual styles and contributions of the individual members that they practically cease to function as songs if any member isn't present. And the DeSk material is far and away the best stuff I've ever had a hand in writing, so it's kind of a drag to know that I can't get up on stage and just busk these songs, but they rely so much on the sound of the group to achieve their effect, which includes somewhat lengthy instrumental passages. Someone out there may be able to do it, but I'm quite incapable of playing a guitar, piano, bass and drum arrangement on a six-string acoustic.

I'm not sure where it came from, exactly, but while I was digging through the catalog, I started noodling around with a Lennon-style finger-picked version of Pink Floyd's Fearless, from Meddle, Floyd's 1971 album that I have a serious obsession with, and has Echoes on its flip side. As I played around with this arrangement - thinking of my ongoing half-assed project of randomly rearranging various Floyd songs - I couldn't quite get it to sound right. Then I recalled that the song was written in some kind of open 'G' tuning, but I had no idea exactly what, so I futzed with the tuning until I came up with one that didn't sound like ass with what I was playing.

After a couple of days, I lost interest and promptly forgot the arrangement and the tuning. But when I got to Putnam's, and we started busking the first night after dinner, I tried to recreate it. The picking was easy enough, but the tuning took me a little while to recall.

This time I wrote the damn thing down: G B D G D G (low to high). Note that I have no idea what the song's original tuning is, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. And even though he feels it's his least instrument, Putt obliged me with a little fiddle while I recreated the arrangement, and I thought it all sounded rather nice.

We didn't do it at the show* - in fact, I don't think I even thought of it as a possibility. But I did have the laptop and wanted to get something down, and listening back to this recording after a month, I find that it does capture something of the feeling of that cabin, and that weekend, that I really like. I pretty quickly laid down a double-tracked acoustic, and then the vocals, and then Putnam did one quick take at the fiddle,** and that's everything you hear in the final, complete with room noise, wonky vocals and flubs.

Well, okay, I did one quick vocal patch earlier today when I went to mix it down, but that was because Putnam's smoke alarm went off while I was singing on the original take. I do regret that I didn't get Putnam to sing the harmony, but it didn't cross my mind that this was going to be something that I'd like so much, so I just did it quickly myself. Also, in this final mix, I added a little effects here and there to open it up - a little EQ and reverb on the guitars, some echo on the vocals and a little flange on the fiddle to make it sound more like I felt, if you know what I mean.

I think the relaxed spirit of that weekend comes through. As well as the melancholy that I seem to so enjoy.

D.

--------
Specs:
17" MacBook Pro
2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
OS 10.5.4
Garageband
Celebrity Ovation Acoustic Guitar
Beat-up old fiddle
Recorded on Swamp Road in Durham, ME
July 3, 2008
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*At the show, as mentioned here at the Rambler around that time, I actually ended up playing a DeSk song toward the end of Putnam's set after all... albeit the one song that's the most 'Dave' of the bunch.

**Don't call it a violin. Putnam gets very unhappy. I got snarky and called the Garageband track 'Fiddolin,' but I don't think he noticed.

P.S.: Coincidentally, the Floyd band I play keys in will be debuting Fearless at our show this coming Friday - that's the Floyd arrangement, not the rustic folk cabin version. Ace of Clubs, for those who are interested.

Awaiting the Lady

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:28:00 +0000

Yesenia's been in the tub for a couple of hours, and I've effectively done everything I wanted to do tonight - mostly cleaning the guestroom for Putnam's stopover tomorrow. Now I'm just waiting for her to come to bed so we can finish episode three of 'The Story of India.'

And BTW: http://www.deadline.com/2012/03/will-ferrell-returns-for-anchorman-2/

Yep. Something to look forward to.

D.

The Pile

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Having two posts in as many days not got up for one reason or another (technical glitch for the second, self-censorship the first), it occurred to me to see just what was lurking in the unpublished Rambler archives. And? A list of ten unpublished entries, including the two from this week. About half of these are one of two sentences that trail off and clearly fail to spark. A couple of unfiled entries are kind of sort of done, with a little polish.

And then there's exactly one that's completely finished, but not published - a Weekend Listening from the summer of 2008, a somewhat dull read detailing a sleep-inducing arrangement of Pink Floyd's Fearless, recorded at Putnam's cabin with his fiddle accompaniment.

There's no explanation as to why I didn't post at the time, so I'm going to assume it's the dullness of it. With the Rambler at its peak, I clearly had higher standards. Now I have no standards. So I'm thinking it might become the first post in the return of the Weekend Listening series, and what the heck - if it's boring, you can just skip it.

D.

Blogger!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:58:00 +0000

Sorry - had a nice long entry in the ongoing 'The Liberal Media' series, but Blogger is being buggy tonight and I'm having a deuce of a time formatting it. So I'll try to wrangle that into shape for tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you're so inclined, feel free to read parts one, two and three. It should be noted that it started as an actual essay with my observations about internet forums and then devolved into a more general 'you are there' series of notable interactions I've had in these forums. Whether they support my initial thesis or not. Part three is fairly off the path, and the (still in progress) part four is pretty much a sign that the container needs to be rethought.

If you're feeling really lazy, my thesis is one that I've referred to both obliquely and directly over the lifespan of the Rambler - specifically that the people we are online are not really who we are. It's all about my fascination with by the way people interact with each other on these forums and with who I become/appear to be when I participate. Whee!

D.

Framework

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 05:25:00 +0000

In yet more proof of something I already knew but keep needing to be reminded of, I was able to actually make a breakthrough with a couple of really completion-resistant songs I've been futzing with for a while by suddenly seeing them as part of a larger work - the usual 'concept album' approach. Of course, this is not saying that I'm actually writing another goddamn concept album, just that the only way I seem to be able to breathe life into a song as a solo writer (particularly with lyrics) is to have it reflect a facet of some larger theme and/or narrative.

Generally, my framework is like scaffolding that can be knocked away when the series of songs is complete, and the songs only function as a concept album if you're told in advance that it is. The concept is essentially just an organizing principle so that I can get everything in order and see what bits are missing in order to finish writing particularly stubborn songs. Figuring out where the boxes are is very useful in filling them.

It definitely came in handy on Selling the Downtown Dream, where I was able to step back and see a general theme emerging from the songs that were already written and figure out what connective tissue was missing and simply write to that. It actually produced a couple of the best songs on that album, so I've trusted the impulse ever since, sometimes to the great aggravation of my bandmates.

We'll see whether or not this particular new theme will have legs strong enough to allow me to write the lyrics/melodies for a decent number of the remaining proto-songs The Tappan Sea have in the hopper. The piecemeal approach sure is taxing. A whole new theme for each song? Honestly, who has that much to say?

D.

Substitute Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 01:59:00 +0000

I just found myself in the middle of writing a long and cranky rant that I thought I would spare you all. Perhaps I'll come back to it and trim the edges off and share with you. Probably not; shame... it was pretty funny. Someone flailing around drunkenly with an axe is always funny.

Anyway, the weird thing is that the redacted entry was all about how much I find myself enjoying my new perspective thanks to my newly-official employment. But you know me - there can't be any actual life enjoyment without the concomitant weltschmerz that you expect.

But fuck that. I'm in a damn good mood, and choose to continue to be. How's that? If you want misery, you'll have to make your own this week.

Dust Cloud Settling

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 23:58:00 +0000

Today marked the first day of Spring Cleaning here at Beadboard Manor, meaning that not everything was cleaned that is marked for cleaning, but it damn sure will be over the next month or so. Hey, this shit takes time.

Good brain-cleaning day, too. Anyone following this blog regularly (or even having read it once, quite frankly) will know that the last few years have seen something of a downturn in my own fortunes, along with the economic fortunes of the entire goddamn planet. Well, here's the good news: tomorrow is my first day as an actual, official Benjamin Moore employee. It's good news in that although I've been working there since June of 2010, it's been in a freelance contractor capacity - which is bad both for morale and also for practical reasons, like benefits and (no shit) loan applications and the like. That's America - Everybody loves an entrepreneur, but who gives a shit about the freelancers?

In many ways, I'm considering this upgrade to be the official end to my time underground, which started roughly in November of 2008. At some point, I'll collect a bulleted list of befallen crap, but today is a day to celebrate the new list of halfway decent news, which has been growing longer since last August.

NOW! Now is the time to get busy. Or at least get drinking. I'll buy the first round.

D.

PS: And Karl - if your good news tomorrow is also happening, then I'm going to insist you buy the next round.

John Carter of Closter

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 01:39:00 +0000

Sort of a mish-mash day - got a haircut, saw a movie, went for a mini-hike, picked up Yesenia's car from the commuter lot, made pizzas and watched a few things on the Hulu. None of which (beyond the general good feeling of spending a quiet, domesticated day with my wife) will stay with me beyond the time it takes to write and post about them. Already it's fading.

Little details will remain. The peanut butter frozen yogurt after the movie. The Peroni with dinner, the Funny Bones for dessert. The taste of the blackened sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives on the second pie, the chipotle Field Roast veggie sausage on the first. Going off the trail to take a look at the odd man-made swamp in a chain-link enclosure. Yesenia cold in her black raincoat, despite the sun being so warm that I had to take off my sweater. Etc.

If I could have a life made up of just the little bits, and skip the big bits, I'd probably be quite content.

D.

P.S.: John Carter? It was pretty good.

The Tools We Use

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:29:00 +0000

Best to remember that - unless you're having the dream career you've always wanted - the jobs we have are there to ensure that we can support the life we want.

So: what is the life we want?

D.

Tofu & Laundry

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Kopperman) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:59:00 +0000

Just had a wonderful little dinner - Yesenia made baked tofu, marinated in ginger, soy sauce, plum vinegar and a few other like-minded ingredients. We then laid it over mixed greens, threw a few other salad veggies in there and drizzled a little of the marinade as dressing. So I guess I owe Alicia Silverstone some thanks, since it's her recipe.

And now it's almost 10 PM, and I'm writing this on the couch while Yesenia sleeps next to me. I'm waiting for the laundry to finish drying so I can fold it and put away. I'm guessing she's waiting for me. So it's all about the waiting.

At least the cats are inside - one of them (Frida, the calico, of course) spent all night outside last night. That's the real sign that Spring is actually here - the first cat rumspringa. What she did or where she went, she refused to say when she came back in this morning. Perhaps it was to do missionary work for poverty-stricken cats in Bulgaria.

D.