Monday, October 26, 2015

Is This Irony?

Not that I have a philosophical difference with them but I'm not one to own a smartphone.  I've railed against what they've become now long enough that for me to have a one would be quite comical.

An old friend of mine, Kit, gets a hold of me recently about a job.  He's been a senior art director for just about every one of the big tech companies in the bay area for the past twenty years.

I signed a shitload of documents for the company Kit is now working for, which I didn't pay any attention to but I'm pretty sure a NDA was one of them.

The job and it's a real sweet job by the way, is to shoot stuff for this company who shall not be named with their top of the line smartphone.....how funny is that?
The gave me one.  Shit.  Well, for sure I'm not activating the phone.  I can use it just as a camera and nothing more.

I do get to play with my favorite rock.  I only brought one rock with me in the move from Dogpatch SF to Dogtown Oakland and this is it.

The more wires on the studio floor, the funner the job.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

A Most Dis-functional Band


Cary, John and I have been getting together for years, years I tell you, to play music.  We still don't have one song down.  Not one.  There's lots to do before we get down to pulling out the instruments.  There's eating, drinking, listening to what's coming out of the speakers, bunch of laughing, angry words, finger pointing, kevetching (did I spell that right?).  Ok...and then comes what do you want to play, I dunno, what do you want to play, I dunno what should we play, how bout Dirty Old Town, I'm tired of that, let's do some obscure ten minute English ballad, eye rolling, no let's do Natural Woman, John, you sing that this time, I can't remember the words, ok, Cary, you sing it, I'm not feeling that tonight.

Well, let's open that bottle of scotch then, maybe that will help.

That helps, but not for the music.  It sure helps in other ways though.

And then the tuning of the guitars start.  Oh Lord, help me here.  They can tune their guitars ad infinitum.
And tuning.
And tuning.

Then we actually start to play something and stop.  Can't remember the words, or the chords or the key.

So we pour some more.  That helps, but not the music.
We go out to Cary's back porch to catch some air, maybe watch the sun go down over Twin Peaks.  Let the Coca Cola sign let out a sigh and run through it's little light show.
Let's play one of your songs Cary.  Let's do "Irony."  Cary is one hell of a song writer and so we do "Irony" and almost make it to the very end but we end in a huff.  We have a hard time ending songs in a meaningful way.
Cary jumps up waving his arms when I start to complain about how we end songs

We get in a groove, do some jams.  They peter out.

John and John's beard.

Cary decides he needs to tell us about a wedding he went to up in Willits.  Complete with a phone slide show.  Man, have we regressed as a species with looking at photos on phones now.  So sad.

Well, that about wraps up the night.  Five hours, maybe four songs total.  Next time, we'll have forgotten how we did those four and re-invent them.
But damn.  Hardly anything better then when we do connect on something and so we will come back and try it again.