This is basically an experiment I am actually using back to dictate to produce this blog. I am also not going to add it any of the results. So if anything seems non-grammatical, strange, or even nonsensical, blame the software. Paragraph. Well, it looks like I don't know how to make a
Period and period enter it and see what I tell you? Things get very strange, particularly when you maintain a rule of not making any corrections. What I was trying to say before I so rudely interrupted myself was, quotation well it looks like I don't know how to make a
Then a if. If. Paragraph. Enter. I can't seem to work out what the word paragraph does. Sometimes it makes a
What is happening is that when I say the word of new followed by the word paragraph, it does in fact, create a new... paragraph.
Curiously, it's a lot more difficult to compose a blog with any sense of structure or thought flow in this method. Because I'm so conditioned to form in my thoughts using the keyboard. So I apologize for not only the rambling quality of the Rambler, but the clear misuse of the English language.
What Dictate is best for other moments delete. Start again. What dictate is best for our the moments when it doesn't understand exactly what you're trying to say. So I think to leave you this evening, I will give you the POR... oh wait. I did not say oh wait. I said keep your. No, I said, the pew or a. Thought it. It's.
Here is some to your. No here is some total nonsense for you. Got else I can as the vibe and I found the LDAP to have the period. When dictate doesn't understand what you're saying, it just makes shift up. For example, much of the above, and this bit right here: and at August met and our stead of together via the led by on the lap I've put back on a knack in the that now.
Goodnight.
D.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Recycled Message Board Rant
Nobody responded to my criticism of the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe over at the message board I frequent, so I'll put it here, where it can do double duty - since my brain is shot from the Floyd practice earlier.
Someone asked who had yet or was going to see Prince Caspian, and I am not.
I loved - and still love - the books. The first film was a huge disappointment in a way that almost no other property adaptations have been - and, curiously, it's in the misinterpretation of Lewis's allegory that it falls down, bad. And it's odd that I feel this way, because I'm a secular Jew, but it was so painful to see the filmmakers miss the point entirely.
I guess you could say that the Christianity of the book has been 'Americanized' for the first film. Sure, the plot is hewed closely to, but only the dark and dutiful aspects of Lewis's thesis on faith are in there.
Sure, good is to fight and defeat evil. But isn't there anything else to a life in Christ? Joy, perhaps? The book gives us Aslan taking a moment and playing like a kitten after his resurrection, taking joy in new life. The film goes right from the moment of resurrection to the battle. The book shows Narnian creatures celebrating the arrival of Christmas after so many years with a huge feast, then they're visited by Santa Claus and given gifts. This is gone. Now, Santa Claus just shows up as some grim dude to give the kids the weapons they need to fight the 'good' fight.
Fight, fight, fight, fight. Blah. Why, exactly? Lewis says that faith is sometimes a struggle, but those who prevail will find joy in Christ. The film says that faith is just a dreary, endless battle (with bad CGI) against the forces of evil. Feh.
----------------
BTW: The Floyd show is this Friday, at the Bruckner. I'll put up details tomorrow.
D.
Someone asked who had yet or was going to see Prince Caspian, and I am not.
I loved - and still love - the books. The first film was a huge disappointment in a way that almost no other property adaptations have been - and, curiously, it's in the misinterpretation of Lewis's allegory that it falls down, bad. And it's odd that I feel this way, because I'm a secular Jew, but it was so painful to see the filmmakers miss the point entirely.
I guess you could say that the Christianity of the book has been 'Americanized' for the first film. Sure, the plot is hewed closely to, but only the dark and dutiful aspects of Lewis's thesis on faith are in there.
Sure, good is to fight and defeat evil. But isn't there anything else to a life in Christ? Joy, perhaps? The book gives us Aslan taking a moment and playing like a kitten after his resurrection, taking joy in new life. The film goes right from the moment of resurrection to the battle. The book shows Narnian creatures celebrating the arrival of Christmas after so many years with a huge feast, then they're visited by Santa Claus and given gifts. This is gone. Now, Santa Claus just shows up as some grim dude to give the kids the weapons they need to fight the 'good' fight.
Fight, fight, fight, fight. Blah. Why, exactly? Lewis says that faith is sometimes a struggle, but those who prevail will find joy in Christ. The film says that faith is just a dreary, endless battle (with bad CGI) against the forces of evil. Feh.
----------------
BTW: The Floyd show is this Friday, at the Bruckner. I'll put up details tomorrow.
D.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Name That Tune - Finally!
Your Weekend Listening • 5.16.08
Won't You Come Back to Me, 1992
This is a blog in progress - tune in Saturday afternoon for the full upload.
Oy. How about Monday morning? Apologies for the delay, people - this weekend turned out to be jam-packed with stuff, and I didn't want to give this feature short-shrift. Then I realized, well, my next week is going to be pretty jam-packed, too - in fact, there will be jams and they're packed in pretty tight - so I might as well get to it.
Not like it's going to be a big blog of revelations for this song. I have no recollection of when it was written or even what instrument it was written on. That's me playing the Rhodes on that, which would suggest that it was written on piano, but I know enough about my writing and playing style from the time to say with some surety that it was most likely written on guitar - the chord change and structure is just too 'simple' for me to have written it on piano. But why and when did the Rhodes enter into the equation? Fucked if I know.
See, the session these recordings came from was what I would consider my first album. Not that anything was released or marketed or anything, but after about five years of dicking around with all acoustic four-tracks (guitar and piano were all I could play at this point) and going through my entire time in college without getting a rock band together, I felt like it was time to blow a chunk of change and get something I could stand to listen to together.
To that end, I pressed into service the twins, Ansley and Bran Lancourt, and the drummer in their power trio (known at the time as The Good Fall), Craig Rogers. This was a band that practiced every day - Craig lived with them - and were incredibly tight, so the learning of the material went very quickly. I don't recall more than a week or so of practice before going into the studio, but I could be wrong. I didn't end up playing much on the final recordings - some little acoustic here, some keys there - because it was an airtight band and my playing style didn't really fit in.
Frankly, my playing style still wouldn't fit into what that band was doing. White-blues-funk-rock has never been anything that I could automatically sit down and toss off, as should be indicated by the slightly funkier Rhodes-with-Wah pedal part I tried to play on the chorus. Still, my playing on the verse indicates my playing style as contrasted with these other musicians - when confronted with a flurry of complex, aggressive musicianship, I fall back into my default mode of very laid-back comping.
What's particularly interesting on hearing this song and the eight others that were on the album - an album titled Agnostic Love Songs, btw - is that the country-folk angle was there in my writing as early as 1992. Which is odd, because I'd swear I didn't start writing in that vein for another few years, yet. Probably, if I'd had more of a sense of myself as a musician at the time, or a wider library of influences to draw from, this album would have been a much different beast - quieter, more contemplative. Lord knows the more rocking songs on the album - and The Good Fall could rock, let me tell you - show my singing voice and vocal meter in their worst possible light, straining to hit notes and pack syllables in, and failing to do so with depressing regularity.
Today's entry, therefore, is something of an anomaly on the album - a simple, straightforward and tuneful number that's about as heartfelt as I was capable of. Even the weakness of my voice at that point played to its favor, since the pretty basic plea for reconciliation and sense of loneliness aren't too hard to miss in the lyric, written with my college girlfriend in mind. It's an anomaly in that regard as well - almost all the other songs on the album are buried in unnecessary wordplay, and I recall specific comments from the twins to that effect while I was recording the vocals.
True, the songs would have worked better if the band had slowed down the tempos a bit, but trying to get The Good Fall to play in a more Dave style - at a point when said style was a big question mark - would have been a lot like trying to slow the Earth in its orbit by going outside and jumping up and down. When those guys took off, it truly was an unstoppable force of nature. And the playing is great, no denying. The Good Fall arrived at the Dave Matthews Band sound a good four years before that band broke.
Really, if I'd had more maturity as a writer and performer, I would have seen that I needed to simplify my own approach on every song, as I somehow did with this one. I'm making an educated guess, here, that Won't You Come Back to Me was written very late in the game, possibly just weeks before we went to record, while some of the other songs on the record date back as far as 1990. Perhaps not coincidentally, the older songs are the ones most in need of a syllablectomy, so at least I was working it out.
But it's recordings like this that help us all work things out. When you're a young musician, developing your style - and a young writer, developing a voice - the largest influence is going to ultimately be yourself and how you react to what you've done. and hopefully, you regard it as a challenge to improve, whittling away at the extra crap you think you need, until you find the songs within.
Tech info:
1992 - Recorded at Kevin Lacy's Freudian Slip Studios, on 1" 8-track.
Mixed directly to Analog cassette tape.
2008 - Imported to Logic Express, added Compression and EQ.
D.
Addendum: I'd be remiss if I didn't point out Ansely's rather nice harmonica solo at the end - thanks for reminding me.
Won't You Come Back to Me, 1992
Oy. How about Monday morning? Apologies for the delay, people - this weekend turned out to be jam-packed with stuff, and I didn't want to give this feature short-shrift. Then I realized, well, my next week is going to be pretty jam-packed, too - in fact, there will be jams and they're packed in pretty tight - so I might as well get to it.
Not like it's going to be a big blog of revelations for this song. I have no recollection of when it was written or even what instrument it was written on. That's me playing the Rhodes on that, which would suggest that it was written on piano, but I know enough about my writing and playing style from the time to say with some surety that it was most likely written on guitar - the chord change and structure is just too 'simple' for me to have written it on piano. But why and when did the Rhodes enter into the equation? Fucked if I know.
See, the session these recordings came from was what I would consider my first album. Not that anything was released or marketed or anything, but after about five years of dicking around with all acoustic four-tracks (guitar and piano were all I could play at this point) and going through my entire time in college without getting a rock band together, I felt like it was time to blow a chunk of change and get something I could stand to listen to together.
To that end, I pressed into service the twins, Ansley and Bran Lancourt, and the drummer in their power trio (known at the time as The Good Fall), Craig Rogers. This was a band that practiced every day - Craig lived with them - and were incredibly tight, so the learning of the material went very quickly. I don't recall more than a week or so of practice before going into the studio, but I could be wrong. I didn't end up playing much on the final recordings - some little acoustic here, some keys there - because it was an airtight band and my playing style didn't really fit in.
Frankly, my playing style still wouldn't fit into what that band was doing. White-blues-funk-rock has never been anything that I could automatically sit down and toss off, as should be indicated by the slightly funkier Rhodes-with-Wah pedal part I tried to play on the chorus. Still, my playing on the verse indicates my playing style as contrasted with these other musicians - when confronted with a flurry of complex, aggressive musicianship, I fall back into my default mode of very laid-back comping.
What's particularly interesting on hearing this song and the eight others that were on the album - an album titled Agnostic Love Songs, btw - is that the country-folk angle was there in my writing as early as 1992. Which is odd, because I'd swear I didn't start writing in that vein for another few years, yet. Probably, if I'd had more of a sense of myself as a musician at the time, or a wider library of influences to draw from, this album would have been a much different beast - quieter, more contemplative. Lord knows the more rocking songs on the album - and The Good Fall could rock, let me tell you - show my singing voice and vocal meter in their worst possible light, straining to hit notes and pack syllables in, and failing to do so with depressing regularity.
Today's entry, therefore, is something of an anomaly on the album - a simple, straightforward and tuneful number that's about as heartfelt as I was capable of. Even the weakness of my voice at that point played to its favor, since the pretty basic plea for reconciliation and sense of loneliness aren't too hard to miss in the lyric, written with my college girlfriend in mind. It's an anomaly in that regard as well - almost all the other songs on the album are buried in unnecessary wordplay, and I recall specific comments from the twins to that effect while I was recording the vocals.
True, the songs would have worked better if the band had slowed down the tempos a bit, but trying to get The Good Fall to play in a more Dave style - at a point when said style was a big question mark - would have been a lot like trying to slow the Earth in its orbit by going outside and jumping up and down. When those guys took off, it truly was an unstoppable force of nature. And the playing is great, no denying. The Good Fall arrived at the Dave Matthews Band sound a good four years before that band broke.
Really, if I'd had more maturity as a writer and performer, I would have seen that I needed to simplify my own approach on every song, as I somehow did with this one. I'm making an educated guess, here, that Won't You Come Back to Me was written very late in the game, possibly just weeks before we went to record, while some of the other songs on the record date back as far as 1990. Perhaps not coincidentally, the older songs are the ones most in need of a syllablectomy, so at least I was working it out.
But it's recordings like this that help us all work things out. When you're a young musician, developing your style - and a young writer, developing a voice - the largest influence is going to ultimately be yourself and how you react to what you've done. and hopefully, you regard it as a challenge to improve, whittling away at the extra crap you think you need, until you find the songs within.
Tech info:
1992 - Recorded at Kevin Lacy's Freudian Slip Studios, on 1" 8-track.
Mixed directly to Analog cassette tape.
2008 - Imported to Logic Express, added Compression and EQ.
D.
Addendum: I'd be remiss if I didn't point out Ansely's rather nice harmonica solo at the end - thanks for reminding me.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Happynoia
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/15/same.sex.marriage/index.html
I'm going to regard this as a major positive, and try not to think how it might impact the Presidential election, as the Massachusetts ruling did in 2004.
Perhaps the most unwittingly humorous part of the article:
"Groups opposing same-sex marriage also reacted strongly to the ruling.
"The California Supreme Court has engaged in the worst kind of judicial activism today, abandoning its role as an objective interpreter of the law and instead legislating from the bench," said Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues for the group Concerned Women for America, in a written statement."
If the Women of America are so fucking concerned, why can't they find a female policy director? Oh, wait a minute - I have a phone call...
...I've just been offered the post of Token Jew at the Ancient Order of the Hibernians.
D.
I'm going to regard this as a major positive, and try not to think how it might impact the Presidential election, as the Massachusetts ruling did in 2004.
Perhaps the most unwittingly humorous part of the article:
"Groups opposing same-sex marriage also reacted strongly to the ruling.
"The California Supreme Court has engaged in the worst kind of judicial activism today, abandoning its role as an objective interpreter of the law and instead legislating from the bench," said Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues for the group Concerned Women for America, in a written statement."
If the Women of America are so fucking concerned, why can't they find a female policy director? Oh, wait a minute - I have a phone call...
...I've just been offered the post of Token Jew at the Ancient Order of the Hibernians.
D.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
What comes after the new wave?
(Higher-res version at the link.)
For some surprising reason - not that it's really surprising, but I am nonetheless surprised - a lot of the more interesting work in computer animation (both for film and online) have come out of France.
Take today's Rambler Helper, for example. This is a student film (originally in French, but translated to English for out viewing enjoyment). And while I don't doubt that a lot of student work of equal quality has been produced in recent years in the U.S. and other countries, I'm kind of stunned at both the effortless quality of this film and the complete and total immersion in a vision that is the stamp of directorial authority.
And while it is effectively a universal story in the film, there's something in the education that is uniquely French. I don't mean the voice of the boy, although that's a small part of the flavor. I mean some large ephemeral thing that's difficult to put your finger on, but you know it when you see it. It completely suffused The Triplets of Bellville, as well.
I guess it's the flavor that playing with the expectations of the form will bring - not metacontextual, necessarily, but these French auteurs like to find what's unique about the form in which they're working, and comment on it in some subtle but deeply salient way.
I don't know. You tell me.
D.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Viral Video is the Tired Blogger's Friend
What do you post when you're suffering from a sudden late-night onset of brain failure? If you're me, you help promote a band you've never heard of by linking to the very clever video for their very catchy song featuring their very cute singer.
Apparently, between this and Feist, them alternagirls have it worked out that product partnering with Apple is the way to get the geek bucks flowing to their iTunes offerings...
Karl? This one is definitely up your alley. In fact, I think they named the alley in honor of you...
D.
Apparently, between this and Feist, them alternagirls have it worked out that product partnering with Apple is the way to get the geek bucks flowing to their iTunes offerings...
Karl? This one is definitely up your alley. In fact, I think they named the alley in honor of you...
D.
International Geophysical Month
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/china.quake/index.html
Okay, God's really racking 'em up in Asia this month. What gives? God sucks, apparently. Don't look at him funny or he might open a sinkhole under your house, or rain fire on you, or whatever fucked up thing he's in the mood for that day.
For you? Giant, flaming, throbbing, slightly radioactive hemorrhoids. Don't like it? Well, fuck you. Who do you think he is? He's God, dammit.
D.
Okay, God's really racking 'em up in Asia this month. What gives? God sucks, apparently. Don't look at him funny or he might open a sinkhole under your house, or rain fire on you, or whatever fucked up thing he's in the mood for that day.
For you? Giant, flaming, throbbing, slightly radioactive hemorrhoids. Don't like it? Well, fuck you. Who do you think he is? He's God, dammit.
D.
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