Never been one to let the carrier drop

Okay, so I’m noticably stiff today, which I don’t understand (I’m assuming it’s just from hauling gear around), but MC has managed our first truly mobile adventure, in the Aurifice coffee house in scenic capitol hill.

We, of course, forgot a couple of cables, hopefully that won’t happen again 😉 But otherweise all went very smoothly (other than some evil drunk guy menacing the DJ who was on before us – or at least threatening to expose himself, I’m not really clear on what happened other than that it sucked)

I’m looking forward to our next gig, just as soon as we have one. I emailed Kindabuffer and asked if there was any chance of us playing at Presence – I’m guessing no, but then again, if they’re just spinning mix CDs over there *why not*? 😉

We did a pure jam session, no planning, no net, and – amazingly – no problems. The only frustrating/annoying thing was that Alex, who originally wasn’t going to be part of the event, decided at the last minute he wanted to be, and there was mad scrambling for cables/stands/etc – in the end, Alex ended up sitting on the couch in front of the stage playing his groovebox. But it all *sounded* good, and from where he was sitting he could even fire off the occasional sample, so I guess all’s well that ends well and soforth.

On the Mr. Fusion project, we’re investigating the possibility of a ‘atomic laser’ i.e. a coherent ion gun. Need to do muchos more research on this subject but it looks like a promising method for synchronizing all the ions in a fusor. [The odds of fusion go up dramatically if all the ions are equadistant from the grids when you turn on the juice]. It’s been good hanging out and talking physics with Deadman, who’s visiting from CA. I think I may have to drag more of my friends out here..

Sadly, one of my friends and musicians i worked with a lot has (apparently) been forbidden by her SO to ever see anyone she met online ever again. Hopefully things will cool off a little there and she’ll be allowed to return to Sheer Sound for some more projects.. I’ve been working on what ought to be a wicked cover of ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ in the hopes of using her vocal talents.. we’ll see how all that works out.

ANd the beat goes on..

Well, had a great time camping.. it wasn’t really ‘car camping’, since we had about a quarter mile walk and three streams to ford.. which was bad, because I hadn’t brought adequate padding because I thought I’d be sleeping in the car. But we had a great time

Now I’m off to run to Sundazed to say hi to Lara for her birthday, then back here for practice w/ Tory [we have a show Tuesday at the Aurifice in Cap Hill! Well, not a show exactly, but a two hour timeslot and we’ll be jammin’ downtempo-like..

Monday, tuesday, weds, thurs, all got something going on. Enjoying the last dregs of sunshine in Seattle..

S.

http://www.barlowonline.com/WalkAway.html

The band was one of the openers for Tom Cochrane.. and honestly, I enjoyed their set at least as much as the Tom C set.. every one of their songs was good, most of them had political or social relevance.. it was like Jason Mraz, only more so..

If this were a fair world, they’d be on the top ten..

Barlow just rocks..

Barlow Lyrics :: Walk Away

Christine’s depression never seems to end
Cause She’ll never be as skinny as the girls on ‘Friends’
She got fat hips and thin lips, she’s jealous of a Q-tip
She’d take stupid over fat
She stuck her fingers down her throat for the very last time today
And she walked away

Malcolm’s got his image
His rock and his Glock
If he lives to see 20 he will have beat the clock
He’s got his ride and his pride and girls by his side
He makes his stand with the gun in his hand
He saw his best friend lying on a stainless steel tray
And he walked away

And the destinations clear …anywhere but here

It Doesn’t matter that you’re lying in the gutter
It Doesn’t matter that your brain’s all cluttered
It Doesn’t matter that you’re covered in scars
You’re never in the gutter with your eyes on the stars

So Walk away from the boyfriend bruises
And the shame of the game that your brain knows you’re losing
And the job that you do it just robs you of who
You can be when you’re free from this mentality
So you’re home by the phone getting stoned all alone
With your chatroom friends, your Korn and Ramones
But the phone don’t ring and Joey just sings ‘Sedated’
You gotta learn to hate it

It Doesn’t matter that you’re lying in the gutter
It Doesn’t matter that your brain’s on all cluttered
It Doesn’t matter that you’re covered in scars
You’re never in the gutter with your eyes on the stars

I helped P. go shopping to outfit her new apartment, and discovered a few interesting things. First of all, whoever has been designing bookshelf stereo systems for the last year needs to be found and issued a pink slip.

I mean, it was awful. These things looked like the most ghetto ghettoblasters you’ve ever seen. Giant tubes, plastic crosshairs.. and so cheaply made you felt like you might break the demo models..

There were a couple of classy or cool looking systems, but by and large they were things I’d expect to see in the back of a pickup truck behind the gun rack. I mean, these were really awful..

We weren’t the only people who rebelled – the store had about three units that were more or less tastefully designed and well built.. and all three were sold out. 😉 While the ghetto-blasters were piled up, and everyone looking was staying away in droves.

Then there were the alarm clocks. My god.. it’s like everyone who designed alarm clocks studied at the School Of Cryptic Controls. How do these people come up with these things?

Then, in Target, I ran across something that made me snap. I mean, I was about to run out of the store screaming ‘STOP! STOP! You’VE ALL BEEN BRAINWASHED! YOU DONT NEED TIHS CRAP!’.

What was it, you ask?

IT was a electric jar-opener.

not a can-opener, mind you.. although even electrifying those seems a little much, I’ve certainly never had a electric one.. but a JAR opener!

Yes, you lower this thing down on your jar and a little electric motor unscrews the lid, saving you the need to exert a few dozen foot pounds to do so yourself.

I’m sorry, but no. I want off this train *right now*. I know americans are getting lazy, but a ELECTRIC FUCKING JAR OPENER? How often do we open jars? Well, we buy all our food prefab, so I guess pretty often, but.. _come on_ people..

Keep me away from Target. (as I quipped walking in, ‘the Wal-mart of the north’)

I propose that from now on, every politician faces a vote, at the END of his tenure in office, ‘should this individual go to jail’. If the majority votes yes, said politician does as much time in the federal pen as he did in office.

Might help improve accountability a li’l bit.

Okay, so, the last couple of days i spent making a frantic run to Berkeley to unscrew the inscrutable. Luckily, the inscrutable has been unscrewed and I have headed back home to Seattle, although it put me a touch behind on everything. But that’s the way things go sometimes.

I haven’t had any huge relevations lately.. although at Fire, a rave I went to southeast of portland which I may or may not have mentioned, I did have a wonderful time, and come to a acceptance that it was just fine to have a wonderful time – and, as long as it’s done in moderation, just fine to enjoy some of the fine chemicals our boys in blue have deemed illegal..

I mean, I have this long standing question out for my mother.. why is drug use (as opposed to abuse/addiction/etc) immoral? She’s not yet been able to answer, but I think for the longest time I had this hangup that I was doings omething wrong (since after all they keep telling you in school, Say No To Drugs.. and the cops would put me away because our society has laws against it, etc, yada yada)

But, as I’ve known intellectually for a while now and am just starting to realize emotionally, our society is a ass, and one should pay just enough attention to it to avoid getting caught. I mean, this is the same overaching organization that thinks it’s okay to tell a bunch of lies to start a war..

Laws are made by politicians, who are by and large evil and not trustworthy. I mean, yes, there are a few good oens.. but te job tends to attract slime. Hence, why worry about laws? Worry about doing good and not doing bad, yes. Worry about laws, no.

Anyway, so I actually managed to completely cut myself loose from anything like guilt for the first time ever.. and just had a wonderful time. I had to get back to Seattle for band prac, unfortunately, so I had to leave early (10a), but..

It’s amazing how things come togeather, though. Because of Fire, I was already on days when I had to run down to Berkeley.. [where their number one problem was a inability to read the minimum system requirements page of the manual.. heh.]

Anyway, the band is doing well.. I’ve ordered a *nice* active PA system [two mackie 1232s and 4 1801s], and need to put the old one up on Craigslist. Probably will ask for $300 each for the 18″ bass bins, $200 each for the amps, and $150 each for the fender tops, and $25 each for the piezo horn clusters. I’m keeping the madisons and the QSC..

More later

Well, I was going to update this yesterday, but exhaustion got in the way.

I’ve more or less finished phase 1 of the project I’m working on.. so now I’m trying to find the energy to put into one of the twenty or so other projects that I’m juggling. There’s the temptation to just lay in bed reading or something..

But I digress.

This weekend definately rocked.. I worked friday late into the day, then slept, woke up @ 10p, talked to P. for a bit, then got in the car and headed on down to Oregon for Fire (‘let’s have fun’), and had a really, really great time.

It was so old skool it practically needed a DJ spinning 8 tracks.. there was house, and trance, and psytrance, and D&B, and every type of electronica you could ask for. There were happy ravers running all over, and the vibe was definately there, at least for me. I had a li’l trouble getting over my fear of talking to people, as always, but every time I did, I was rewarded with another great person, well worth meeting.

I’ve noticed there are very few republican ravers. I wonder why this is? 😉

It was so awesome, watching the sun come up over (1000? 1500? 2000? 2400? _a lot_) all the ravers encamped in the ampatheatre. I kept thinking, this one’s gotta get busted.. but no, it didn’t. It didn’t draw one cop as far as I coudl tell.. probably too far out into the middle of nowhere for all of them.

And, I brought my own tiny contribution, a pair of 450s.. next time, more watts shall I haul.. 😉 and I’m coming way, way earlier. Before sunset, for sure.

And they say Hempfest is coming up, and if I can figure out how to get there on the bike, I’m definately going.. seems like this thing never ever ever slows down..

Well, our first show went swimmingly.. there were a few glitches, like apparently the dialup stream never happened and we had a bunch of trouble with Spinning and Transit Authority. But, overall, we got through it! And the audiance seemed to be digging our stuff..

I’ve always secretly wanted to crank up my system in the middle of the street, so that part was really great. Although.. I now really do understand the appeal behind powered speakers – it’s one less thing to carry, one less cable to connect. I’m pretty much sold on the whole idea.. now there’s just the upgrading. I’m just glad that I hadn’t already upgraded my amps to switchers like I was considering..

[actually, the upgrade to powered will probably cost ~$5000 – I hope to do it in Sept or Oct. I’ve decided that from this day forward, half of my paycheck is going into savings, so I won’t be able to buy as many toys.. but on the other hand, I’ll have a buffer that isn’t stock..]

S.

so apparently Jesiah actually did line up another guy to do sound for me. I can stop panicing now.. assuming I call tomorrow and he says it’s a go 😉

S.