“Things You Should Be Doing When The Meteor Hits” Dept: OK. Yes, we’re all gonna die from impact with an outsized planet fragment, but in the meantime, there’s Kutiman:

Kutiman is an Israeli musician that had the simple, but utterly genius, idea to sample YouTube. He trolled Lord knows how many music videos to find raw material, sliced and diced it, and formed it into these incredible compositions that he’s pulled together into an online album he calls “ThruYou“.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard/seen something new that grabbed me by the eye-pits and immersed me in delight, but Kutiman’s compositions left me flabbergasted, floored and completely transported — not only by the album’s concept (which is genius) or how good the songs are (they are excellent), but also in how sensitively and well he handled the video editing which is an integral part of the song’s delights. For instance, consider this gem called “Someday”. It’s like watching a light and satisfying O. Henry-On-YouTube short story with a surprise twist (the singer) and wonderful little ending (the smile):

When I first saw Kutiman’s stuff, what immediately went through my mind is “this must be the delight that God feels in the human experience”, that delight that artists get to experience and share — immersed in and weaving all these disparate and seemingly unrelated shards and fragments of human passion and expression, floating up like incense, into intricate and beautiful tapestries of sound.

Do yourself a favor and spend 40 minutes with this album at www.thruyou.com and I hope you have as joyful a time taking it in as I did.

“Unctious Little Toady Slayer” Dept: Here’s Jon Stewart of the Daily Show bringing the pain to the odious little business-brown-nosers at CNBC. These “financial journalists” and “experts” bowed and scraped to the same captains of industry for the months before our crisis, the same CEOs whose hubris is wreaking so much havoc and personal pain and who are still robbing the taxpayers blind.

One can only hope that this has the same effect as Stewarts infamous “Crossfire” appearance where his very public expose of the show’s vapid and bankrupt premise was so authentic and devastating that the show was cancelled not too long after.

It’s a pity that the Very Serious Media, for the most part, has left the heavy lifting of this kind of obvious truthtelling to late-night comedy hosts like Stewart and Colbert, but at least we’re in capable hands.

More From The “Death Of The Expert” Dept: Brian Appleyard offers up a nice finisher:

…I didn’t mention the findings of Philip Tetlock at Berkeley. He studied pundits and discovered they were, to a rough approximation, always wrong when making predictions. He took 284 pundits and asked them questions about the future. Their performance was worse than chance. With three possible answers, they were right less than 33 per cent of the time. A monkey chucking darts would have done better. This is consoling. More consoling still is Tetlock’s further finding that the more certain a pundit was, the more likely he was to be wrong. Their problem being that they couldn’t self-correct, presumably because they’d invested so much of their personality and self-esteem in a specific view. (That makes me think of so many people, almost everybody, in fact.)

Tetlock said: ‘The dominant danger remains hubris, the vice of closed-mindedness, of dismissing dissonant possibilites too quickly.’

Personally, I am fully aware that I am wrong about everything, a posture which, if applied correctly, would make me right 33 per cent of the time in Tetlock’s tests and, therefore, a better pundit than the pundits.

(via Andrew Sullivan, as always)

“In-Jokes From The ’80s” Dept: A hilarious tribute for we children of the Hairspray Decade…

“Wednesday’s child is full of woe; Thursday’s child has far to go…”
~ Old folk rhyme

Amira is today’s Wednesday’s Child, but today she was full of “woah!” She and I played in in our first “band” setting — first her on drums and me on bass, and then her on keys and me on drums. It was awesome. I’ve taught her how to count off a song on the drum sticks — “One! Two! One two three four!” — which she did faithfully, and then while she was playing drums she started singing a little song she made up on the spot. I didn’t really catch the lyrics, but she was going to town. She’s picking up a sense of rhythm, too. I’ve been holding her on my lap and doing the bass drum/hi-hat while helping her beat out a rhythm with the sticks. She’s falling into it pretty naturally, I think. Anyway, it was cool to jam for the first time with my daughter. I’m going to try and rope her in to learning a rock band instrument so I can play music with her.

Ahmis says her mom has a piano at her house, and she’d be open to us bringing it back here so that I/we could play, but she said she doesn’t want to help us move it so I’ll have to figure out how to get it here. I was teaching Amira a bit of piano stuff when we lived with Janece’s parents, but haven’t really had the opportunity to do it since we’ve been here. I want to get her started with it, tho, and I’m planning on starting lessons with her sometime this next year if she seems ready.

As for Thursday’s child? Well, that’s me — lots of work to get done, some things I need to get done before months end and I have far to go. So, it’s off to bed. I’ll leave you with the White Duke…

Thursday’s Child
David Bowie

All of my life I’ve tried so hard
Doing my best with what I had
Nothing much happened all the same

Something about me stood apart
A whisper of hope that seemed to fail
Maybe I’m born right out of my time
Breaking my life in two

Now that I’ve really got a chance
Everything’s falling into place
Seeing my past to let it go
Only for you I don’t regret
That I was Thursday’s Child

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born I was (x2)

Sometimes I cried my heart to sleep
Shuffling days and lonesome nights
Sometimes my courage fell to my feet

Lucky old sun is in my sky
Nothing prepared me for your smile
Lighting the darkness of my soul
Innocence in your arms

Now that I’ve really got a chance
Everything’s falling into place
Seeing my past to let it go
Only for you I don’t regret
That I was Thursday’s Child

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born I was Thursday’s Child
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born I was Thursday’s Child
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born I was
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born I was

Everything in it’s proper time. After three grim/melancholy posts in a row, I should probably give you a couple of songs about love and home.

Liquid Honey (Written by Paul Moment, performed by Dresden China Doll)

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

Home Is You (Written and performed by Paul Moment)

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

I’m doing an early Christmas card. No, calm down; they’re not for me. I’ve never been that pre-planned in my life. A client of mine is getting their cards ready early. I can’t imagine what could take 5 months to prepare, but there you go – they’re on top of the game. Here’s the cards – the link will take you a closer view.

I’m really tired tonight, so this isn’t gonna be anything profound. I set up some drums and Amira and I pounded away at them for a fun little stretch. I taught her the names of all the drums (bass, tom, cymbal, snare, etc.) but she is stuck on calling the hi-hats the “straw hats” which I obviously found quite charming. I’ll probably set up the rest of my guitar gear tomorrow and start getting back in touch with what’s left of my musical impulses.

Tonight’s film: Little Miss Sunshine. Rating: recommended. That is all. Good night.

This extraordinary video was created by an animator named Yannick Puig for song called “I Lived On The Moon” by Kwoon. Yannick created a page full of lovely sketches and background on his work, and should you want to save a nice high-quality version of the video for enjoyment later, there’s a link to that, too.

Jewels like this that artists create are generous little gifts to humanity. I’m an artist, but for some reason I’ve only recently become really aware of what a necessary and nourishing activity art is for the human spirit – both for those who create it and those who receive it. Enjoy, and thanks, Yannick.

I’ve been friends with Tim Reece and Drew Plymale since my days playing guitar with them in Via Satellite seven years ago in San Diego. They’ve been touring with a great band called The Album Leaf for a few years now, and I got to see them play at Neumos on Capitol Hill last night (for free on the guest list, no less — thanks, guys!). They have become great musicians in these last years. Tim is primarily a drummer and Drew is primarily a guitar player, but they’re both multi-instrumentalists. They’ve gotten to tour and play with a lot of great bands, including Sigur Ros.

Anyway, it was really great to see them both. We haven’t been in close contact, but we’ve stayed close and it was fabulous to catch up and be a part of their lives again for an evening. I got to meet Drew’s excellent girlfriend Megan (sp?) who he says is a great vegan chef, and I got to meet a friend of theirs who came to the show who is the drummer for Sufjan Stevens and attends Mars Hill Church, apparently. (Just being near all these guys raises my indie cred a couple hundred points…)

The Album Leaf put on a great show, both in visuals and music. Their music is really good – kind of post-modern soundtrack music, but with very intelligent songwriting and unexpected surprises. You can download their music on iTunes or any other fine online digital music distributor — a sample is below.

The evening was not without sadness. It was depressing to think about all of the time I’ve spend pursuing everything but music over the last years since Via Satellite. I told Janece that here I am, seven years later, just as broke and overworked as I was when I first met Drew and Tim, and they’ve had all these great musical and touring experiences. You can’t second guess your life, I suppose, but last night these last few years felt like time wasted.

Song Samples

The Album Leaf song “Brennivin” is from their Seal Beach EP. Drew put out a personal project under the name Drew Andrews called Answering Machine a few years ago the song “Teleprompter” is one of my favorites.

Sigh. Another five days just flashed by without a post. Granted I spent 48 hours of them without sleep to get a bunch of material done for a big project review, and another all-nighter last night for a Mon morning rollout (as well as some recovery time). But it’s still unbelievable how fast time can occur as rolling by. It’s kinda like sands through the hourglass, or water under a …. well, you know.

I experienced a moment I wanted to capture a day or two ago. I’ve been meaning to write it down so that I remember it. Janece, Amira and I were at the mall getting lunch. Amira was getting pretty tired in preparation for her nap, but not the pesky tired — just the super-relaxed and sweet kind of tired. Janece was holding her while I was cleaning up and getting ready to go. She started singing “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, and Amira was eating it up. She had both hands on the sides of Janece’s face and they were smiling at each other, all snuggled in together oblivious of all of the noise and activity going on around them. The sun was out and gorgeous as only a Seattle spring can be, and a beam was literally shining right down on them. It was a golden thing of beauty — that moment. I actually had the sensation of reaching out and taking the scene and putting in a mental locket to hang around my neck, one of those times where you know that you’ll remember it. I am so lucky to be able to witness Moments like that. In both senses of the word…

Currently enjoying two releases from members of my old band in San Diego, Via Satellite. Check out Glory and also Passing. The main riff of both songs are gorgeous. Both songs are off their new album “Cities Are Temples“. Also, Scott from the band has his own side project called Manuok. He’s pretty good at the lush jazzy emotional chord thing — especially on “All Said And Done”, which I can’t get out of my head. Check out his song samples and video. Drew and Tim from VS currently tour with The Album Leaf (Scott designed the site and Tim did the painting on the last album cover) and Tim has also played drums for Sigor Ros on a tour or two. Lovely boys, all of them, and their beards are second-to-none (except for maybe ZZ Top).

Ah, the lowly oboe – that nasal woodwind that still manages to be eerie enough to raise the small hairs on my neck when I hear it. I’d always assumed that there was a certain equilibrium of oboe players out there in the big wide world — that, like in the Lion King, when an old oboist would die that magically another would rise up to take their place in the great circle of orchestral life. But, no! The intrepid New York Times is reporting that there is in fact a dearth of oboe players out there.

As John Mack, the dean of American oboists, put it, “People are running around like headless chickens saying, ‘Where are we going to find people?’ ”

Wow. Sounds pretty serious. Especially when you consider this:

“They are the principal fiddle of the wind section,” said Paavo Jarvi, the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. “There is a musical and moral authority that comes with the position.”

Yikes, people! Unless we’re prepared to deal with the consequences of leaderless woodwind sections collapsing into moral decay across America, we need to get little Junior into lessons right away! If our orchestras are oboeless, then the terrorists have already won.

First global warming, and then North Korea with nukes, and now this. I hope I can get some sleep tonight.

That’s what I would call them, but the band is actually called Matsonbelle. Very smooth production — very listenable — and the female singer’s voice reminds of someone I can’t put my finger on right now, but it’s that kind of unique little-girl-voice-meets-world-weary-songstress vibe. The song that caught my ear while listening to Radio Paradise was called “Float” and you can hear a version in their handy Flash MP3 player. From their bio:

Matson Belle is an award-winning pop/electronic collaboration with world beat, Middle Eastern and classical string influences who also have strong fan bases in Japan, Belgium, Germany, South Africa, Italy, Greece, Canada, Switzerland, India and the United Kingdom, has a fiction novel named after one of their songs, have won 6 major music awards, have been placed in 3 feature film soundtracks, and had a rock star offer to buy their song “Float” (he was denied) – all through word-of-mouth and a dynamic, international musical palette that doesn’t pigeonhole them into one specific genre.

If it’s tough-ass estrogen ballads you want, then you’ll be wanting to hear Martina Topley-Bird’s album “Anything”.

Gotta head full of to-dos, so I’m clearing out the mental attic with a yard sale of random thoughts and half-penny musings:

• $2.50 ~ STUCK:
  My friend Joel is stuck in Tibet right now, unable to get out because the King dissolved the government and declared a state of emergency. His wife is pretty worried about him. The thing is, they both run ServLife which has done a lot of work in developing countries and they’ve been in sticky situations before. I don’t know if she’s extra worried because she’s pregnant and currently with their other young son without him there, or if there really is more danger in the Tibet situation than I’m aware of right now. I prayed for them today, and will continue to do so. And what’s up with other countries, anyway? The thought of not only having a leader than can dissolve a govt and declare martial law, but living in a country/culture where that could be possible, just doesn’t make sense. Whatever else you can say about America (and you can say a lot), we live in a country where our personal freedoms and mobility are protected to an unprecendented degree – so much so that even having that be an issue is completely foreign to me. I’m grateful.

  UPDATE: It was actually Nepal. Silly me. And Joel made it out.

• $.75 (clearance) ~ ZOMBIE SURVIVAL TECHNIQUES:
  Why don’t zombies fully degrade? In every zombie movie/story, zombies either resurrect or become zombies by getting bitten. If they’re bitten, they turn into disgusting walking corpses that are rotting while on the lookout for human flesh to devour. But, say you’re a survivor battling the zombie hordes. Wouldn’t it make the most sense to just get out of Dodge for a year or two and wait for nature to take it’s course? Presumably the zombies would keep rotting until even the most mobile of them would start to lose limbs and such and be unable to move enough to be a threat. Then you could just round up the bone piles into a nice safe landfill and the whole thing would blow over.
• $1.00 ~ THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY:
  I was talking with Janece about the movie Clear And Present Danger. Movie’s just OK, but it made me wonder about something that’s popped up for me a few times about Christianity and people who deal with violence on a regular basis as part of their work — CIA interrogators, special ops military personnel, spies, prison guards, undercover cops, etc. etc. This society we enjoy is preserved in a number of ways by people willing to engage in violence for the sake of protecting us. They provide a certain kind of safeguard for normal and nice people to enjoy their neighborly lives. I wonder how people in those professions manage to retain their connection with their Christianity. Is it possible to follow closely in the footsteps of Christ, be told in church that “if you’ve done it to one of the least of these, you’ve done it to me” and still work over a suspect until they talk or assasinate a target? Having to deal violence out to other people, as well as live in an atmosphere of potential violence and evil intent must put a special kind of strain on their faith. Can you in fact be a Christian and still have violence as a part of your job description? (By the way, that caption is from a great story by Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite writers.)
• $.25 ~ THE al Qaeda OF ROCK-N-ROLL:
  My friend Sky just sent me a site for a band called Kasabian. Not sure what I think of their music yet, but the site’s pretty cool. I like the progression that happens when you click the red stuff. Are these guys the “al Qaeda of rock and roll”? Kinda funny — the email he sent me said “freakin kick arse new bank”. I thought he was getting all pumped about a new credit union or something, which is mass wierd and pretty funny if you know him at all…
• Free with purchase! ~ FAT SUIT:
  I don’t know if it’s the same for other overweight people, but I just looked in the mirror before taking my shower and it looked like I was wearing one of those Hollywood fat suits. I can see my body structure under the poundage, but the extra weight looks like a bad prop. Hopefully my re-energized consistency with exercise will help. And I’ve been eating at home more, which I’m sure helps with calorie/nutrition control.
• One penny (for your thoughts) ~ COLDFUSION & INERTIA:
  I just spent 24+ hours working devilishly hard on updates for a client site. It’s a real estate site, and I added a mortgage calculator, a bunch of new listing search functionality, a Flash weather center, and some other cool stuff. The mortgage calculator was a piece of crap script I found on a free Javascript site, and it was only after 4 hours of trying to integrate it into the listings search that I realized that it was outputting all the wrong amortization amounts — wierd numbers with no basis in reality. So, I decided to rebuild it in ColdFusion, which is what the site is coded in. It now works great and looks hot, but taught me all kinds of new pain about CF code. And then, I decided that I wanted to try manipulating a Flash file for the weather center by taking an XML feed and having info manipulate the weather center — nothing fancy, just showing the current temp, conditions, humidity and selecting the correct icon for the weather. And the new search functionality is pretty cool, too — also taking an XML feed from a listing service and formatting it to fit the site design. All great stuff, all challenging technically and a great tutorial for coding in ColdFusion. But I probably only made $3/hour on it, and lost a lot of sleep staying up late to finish it, even though I have buckets of work to do on other projects.

  What I was left with was, “What in the world is up with me that I’m not spending this kind of focus and time and resources and fervor on projects that matter to me? Why do I give my design work the best of what I have instead of doing what I’m more passionate about?” The answer: Inertia. I’m good at design, and I’m good technically. I get a certain kind of bang out of it when I kick ass. But at the end of the day, my life is no farther along the path of what I love than it was when I started.

• $.75 ~ SWITCH:
  Speaking of the web, I’ve switched. Firefox, to put it simply, rocks. It’s so very friendly to web developers who long for some kind of adherence to browser/coding standards so that we don’t have to rip our hair out trying to make our layouts play nice with every piece of crap software out there. (I’ve personally taken to only supporting IE5.5+, NN7+, and Opera 7+, along with FF and the Mac browsers, although we still have to deal with IE5 on Mac.) It’s also fast, uncluttered and supports cool add-ins like the free open-source Sage RSS reader. It imports favorites from your old lame browser so you don’t lose them, and, best of all…. tabbed browsing. Being able to simply open a new tab in the same window without cluttering my workspace with a million windows is a huge unexpected leap forward in my ability to get work done online. My new way of working is to open a new Firefox window for each project I’m working on. So, one window will have a bunch of tabs open for that project — the local dev version, the site on the live server, help files, internet resources, coding tips, etc. All I have to do is jump to a new window, and I have all of the resources I need open for that project in one window without the hell of having to Alt+Tab around trying to find where that one with the coding tip was located. Firefox. Make the switch.
• Priceless ~ GROWING LIKE A WEED:
  Janece is putting together an activity center for Amira. She says that Amira seems bored just being held or even played with, so we’re taking our first venture into activity center land. It has a whole bunch of dangly, squeaky, rattley, talking bits, and a seat that will allow Amira to swivel around 360 for whatever catches her fancy. She’s had the low-tech entertainment so far — just hands and playing around — so we’ll see how she takes to this. I’m just still a bit breathless from how fast she’s developed. She’s kind of like those dandelions that pop up in the yard. You look out one day and there’s nothing, and the next day there’s little yellow flowers everywhere. Amazing.
• $1.00 Closeout Special ~ THICKER THAN WATER:
  I need to see some of my family soon. I miss them. We live all over the west coast in such a way that it’s massively time-consuming to drive or even fly to see each other. It’s pretty rare that we all are able to get together. I wonder what it would take to get us all within driving distance, especially when we’re all invested heavily in the areas we’re in?

That is all. I’m closing up the folding tables and taking down the yard sale signs. Time for another sprint at my mountain of work.

I got blogmarked by TangerineSpeedo (aka. The Squatch) sometime in the last couple of days. (Thanks, by the way!) The name put me in mind of a few band names that my first band kicked around when we were forming in the early 90′s here in Seattle:

• Tweed Speedo
• Fuzzduck
• Apple Maggot Quarantine Violators
• Supermoist (named after the Betty Crocker product, with our first album being named, of course, Pudding In The Mix)
• Rosechamber

Thankfully, we ended up choosing Springchamber. (The link leads to the very first web site I ever did, btw.) As you can tell, we spent more time shooting the shit and being clever than we did writing songs, but it was fun nonetheless. I have that band to thank for four of the coolest men I know, their cool wives, and all of the associated crazy strange absurd times we had together over the 6 years we were together. Think about them makes me want to play in a band again.

As for Tweed Speedo, it never made it past the “guys, what do you think about this name?” round, but we did end up naming the horrific and sinister band van “Fuzzduck” because we knew a good thing when we saw it…

Good topic. I’ll do more on my bands later… Meanwhile, here’s a link to a Springchamber tune I wrote.

I’m writing a worship album that I’m planning to have completed and released by the end of May. It’s exciting and confronting all at the same time.

For one thing, worship music isn’t like any other kind of music I know. It’s purpose is not to be a self-expression of the writer/artist as much as it is a tool the writer gives their Christian community to use as a means to meditate on truths of the faith, praise and commune with God, invite those who are seeking truth to consider the Christian way, and strengthen the relationships between believers. The best worship music is simple enough for any person to sing, whether or not they are musical, and yet complex enough to retain interest and insight over multiple repetitions. It’s a pretty unique form.

Most Christian worship music I’ve heard is very listenable and accessible, but also cliched both in theme and lyrics, and music. The worst examples tend to use standard catch-phrases like “God, yer great — at the cross I wait — you saved my soul — and made me whole”, etc. coupled with major chords, very few changes, extremely simple structures, and no surprising musical phrases. The performers are usually husky-voiced, earnest sounding crooners in the U2-minor-league vein (you’d never catch a Jeremey Enigk style singer on a worship album) and the musical vibe is almost always a rootsy acoustic rock sound. Nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose, but if that’s the only option out there after decades of worship music being written, then I figure it’s time for something new.

So, I want to write something new. I had some success at a church I was at a few years ago with taking a slightly different tack. Here’s a sample (lyrics/mp3) and here’s another (lyrics/mp3) and here’s another (lyrics/mp3). But those efforts, while still listenable, are sounding dated. I’ve been wanting to take it to the next level for myself as a songwriter and still make the music accessible to people who want to use it in their worship services. My commitment is to create an album that is moody, artsy, very produced and beautifully jagged — in the style of Radiohead or Pink Floyd or Martina Topley-Bird or Daniel Lanois or Bjork: something completely left-field for the Christian music industry.

I’ve been working hard at it. I have a few new songs, and I like the general lyrical content, but I’m rusty at this. I haven’t led worship or really darkened the door of a Protestant church for 4+ years. I’ve recently started to tour some local churches that are trying new approaches to the worship service, but so far I’ve felt pretty out of place and haven’t heard an opening for the kind of stuff I’m doing. I’ve also been playing with some friends of mine that I played worship music with back in the day to try my new material live and maybe even lead a few services at local churches that are interested.

Tonight was our second practice. What a trainwreck. I didn’t have the chord sheets ready for the bass player, and I felt like all thumbs on my guitar and effects. The two new songs I wrote had some good elements, but they were disjointed, too complex and not simple and catchy. There were a few highlights in the material we tried, but it was a slog for most of the night. Granted it was only the second time we’ve played together in 6 years or something, but it was like hooking back up with an old girlfriend for a make-out session — awkward, bumping noses, not sure if they still like that thing you used to do with your lips, not sure where it’s appropriate to put your hands, etc.

BUT, it was also energizing in a strange way. On my walk with Tova tonight, my head was buzzing with ways to take the best bits from what wasn’t working and re-create some new approaches. The pain of the session was unpleasant, but it got me out of my echo chamber I’ve been writing in and let me hear the music like other musicians would hear it. Ouchy, but instructive. In a strange masochistic way, I’m inspired. (I’m a Capricorn — there’s nothing we like better than a long painful slog. ) The same thing happens in my web design sometimes. The first design or two I do will be hokey and rehashed pablum, but I get them out of my system and sometimes discover elements in the process that I go on to use in a way that produces great results — if I stick with it. I’ve not broken through yet to what I want, but I’m starting to see possibilities for ways to get there.

Just surfed over to Dave Navarro’s blog via the excellent and amazing Brooks Blog (you are a photo master, man — beautiful work). I ran across this answer to some fan mail:

3. How did you beat this horrible dark monster?

In all honesty and sincerity, I let God into my life. Let Him run the show for a while. Easier than it sounds, in fact, running things on my own was obviously not working and when I turned it over, it got WAY easier.

I’m assuming the “dark monster” was drugs or something like that? Anyone else have any news on this?

Speaking of songs, I thought I’d post the lyrics to the song I played for my voice coach.

A little background: I grew up in a cult-level fundamentalist church in Utah in the 70′s that got really weird. My parents, bless ‘em, courageously yanked themselves and us out of there when I was in 6th grade or so, but the experience left my older brother pretty scarred. Anyway, my younger sister got contacted by one of the girls in the church that we’d grown up with named Priscella. My sister said that her life and world is still tied up with the remnant of the church that’s still hobbling along, and it’s this tiny and wierd little half-life of semi-arranged marriage and out-of-wedlock childbearing and guilt-ridden or angry oratories from the pulpit, etc. etc. The only pleasure this girl gets is from playing her violin — a small gleam of something transcendant in the middle of a claustrophic stifling life. Anyway, these lyrics were my take on the conversation with my sister and seeing a picture of this girl and reading a letter she wrote to my sister…

Priscella

Mostly in-between the lines, I saw your straight and narrow writing
I saw your picture, the ghost of a wallflower beneath flourescent lighting
The fear you learned raised dust beneath your eyes
Your smile looked like you were trying
So the “river of life” dried up
Does water flow when you’re crying?

It’s getting cold and dark inside the circle
Your little world revolves around a dying star
Your family photographs aren’t faded
They just caught you looking out

You learned to play the violin and it flew you away
But shadowlands don’t echo sound
Your tiny wings could not escape the atmosphere
Sheltering the clotting ground

It’s getting cold and dark inside the circle
Your little world revolves around a dying star
Your family photographs aren’t faded
They just caught you looking out

Gravity — it’s a clever trap
When nothing else is standing
Maybe you could feel your way
If you scream (and follow the echo)

I finally set up and went to my first voice lesson Thursday. The coach’s name is Susan Carr and she’s in the Queen Anne area of Seattle (206-281-8194 if you’re interested). Her customer list says she’s worked with singers from bands like Alien Ant Farm, Drowning Pool, Alice In Chains, Sunny Day Real Estate and The Presidents Of The USA, to name a few. Broad spectrum of bands and vocal sounds, which caught my eye. Here’s a quick recap for those of you who haven’t taken a voice lesson and, like me, want to know what it’s all about:

(Read the rest of this entry…)

Listening to Martina Topley-Bird’s “Anything” right now. Frickin’ amazing. She did the backup vocals for Tricky on my favorite album of his called “Maxinquaye“. If you have the extra $$, buy it. Apparently, there’s a U.S. release and a British release that has extra songs on it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t wait and got the US version, but it would be cool to hear the extra material.

BTW, I was kinda disappointed in Tricky’s last album — Vulnerable. Didn’t really have the grab-n-kick power of Maxinquaye, and I thought the cover of Dear God was just plain boring and uninventive. And his new girly singer pal isn’t nearly as gritty and visceral as Martina. But, on the other hand, Tricky did a great job with a guest appearance on Martina’s album. Shouldn’a broke up the band…