Set Thy Velvet To Wander

Having missed Velvet Phase V because I threw out my back, The V Bros move to our next gig at Live Mix, this Saturday, August 1st. This would be the third time the VBs have performed since May 2008. After sixteen years of absence, the guys generously responded to help celebrate my 50th birthday. That said a lot.

The Veebs are a great bunch of guys and a helluva lot to play with, but we get together only on special occasions.

Was talking to someone this afternoon about how you can lose all drive. Practicing, playing, creating-all goes by in a big lazy lump without a wisp of guilt. You lose the drive to stay on top of your game and slowly all desire to play leaves. Even lack of self-respect doesn't bother you when you reach that level of apathy. You become a fat stone. Dull, senseless.

In the 90's, I took a long break from all club work and took even paying gigs begrudgingly. I needed to heal from a lot of damage and the unhealthy lifestyle of the late nite player.

That drive is returning. I need to play.

Living the Dream

Gigs these days are mucho hard to come by. Should I dare make a few snide remarks in such an impoverished time?

Yep.

Why? Because it's so damn funny.

Plus, I don't believe the general public has any clue what the real life of working musician is like. And, if there's any way I can discourage young people from going into this as a career, then I've done something good. Before we get to the story, I'd thought we'd outline some truths, ok? O-tay.

1. Most of us have day jobs. Yes, this is true. Those who make it are a micro percentage of those who dream of the world tour, groupies and million dollar mansions. Only a select few ever get close. Even fewer last beyond one album. This day job also gives us the option to turn down ridiculous ripoff offers from club owners, bartering brides who keep upping the ante while lowering the pay or to just say no to the endless freebies that every half-assed, self-named promoter tries to pawn off as "good exposure." The day job is leverage. The best exposure is word-of-mouth.

2. We are invisible. At any social event, you can count on the musicians being even lower in status than the caterer. In fact, I would bet that once the event is over, most of the patrons would not be able to remember any music at all. Such are my own powers of invisibility that I once was accused of not being at a wedding. That is to say, a friend of the family turned the matter over to a lawyer because they were informed that in fact, there was no guitarist at said wedding and charging for such was fraudulent. Ridiculous, but true.

Yes, I am the invisible guitarist. Come see me at The Copa.

3. Money is important. We were once hired by a law firm to provide the ubiquitous background music. At first, the young girl on the phone was pleasant, taking our fee in stride and seemed to accept the terms without qualm. Then the haggling began. And continued. Finally, after she had called multiple times, I got fed up and asked her: "Mam, do you allow your clients to set your fee?" After a few stumbles, she admitted that she was just trying to impress her superiors. Nay. We are professionals in a profession where fame and wealth determine success, talent and skill, but otherwise, if possessing none of those, we are not respected by the public at large. We are ditch diggers.

The common misconception is that musicians, happy-go-lucky people with their heads in the clouds, love to play so much that they will play for free. After all, playing before an audience is its own reward, right? Wrong-o, buck-o.

Some gigs you play for money, others lean toward the elusive "art." The best is when you can combine both.

4. We know what we're doing. I have played in 40 degree weather while guests were ushered inside to warmth. I have played in burning sunshine with sweat running into my eyes making the little black ants on the page seem to swirl while guests were told to stay on the porch. I have played under a tent while a lightening storm raged. I repeated the bridal entrance song (The Taco Bell Canon) so long I thought my hand was going to fall off. I have seen guests fight off swarms of bees and other insects in a scene so surreal that I thought I was watching an old X Files episode. I have squeezed into every tight corner you could imagine, trying in vain to dodge guests and catering staff who insist on trying to knock out my partner's teeth while she plays the flute.

At the governor's mansion one fine Christmas party, I was playing while dodging like a boxer while the cattle streamed steadily by me; unable to see me because I was holding a guitar. My flutist friend was once asked to play on a hill while lightning flashed above. Lightning and a mental rod? Not wanting to be reduced to ash so early in her career, she politely declined and played inside from a safe distance. I have had people stand with their backs to me and talk about me like I was something on the stereo. I am potted plant, not an animal.

In short, all these were the result of poor planning by the no doubt hyperactive "event coordinator" named Trisha or Pam. That is why, when we arrive, we tell you where the best place to set up is because we have been doing this for decades.

There, I feel better. Let's talk about the latest adventure for the Dynamic Duo.

You would figure that since we have done this gig each year and that the fact that the venue, circumstances, expectations are virtually the same each year, that the operation would have become streamlined by now.

No. That cannot be. We are musicians. Every gig is new, but deals with the same tired old practical ties. Plus, we are invisible. I have told you that.

Every year at this gig, we are greeted with looks that immediately suggest that no one has told them anything about musicians, where do they go, what they are doing or how to get them there. I was thinking that somehow this year could be different.

Nay. Thou hopest againsth hope.

The young man behind the table was clearly trying to do his best, but he was out of his depth. He was enjoying the role of power, but was unable to discharge it effectively. I felt myself trying not to laugh as I explained who we were and why we were there. After all, it was hope against hope. I asked if a cart could be borrowed to transport our equipment. A blond, in a perfectly tailored black pants suit, paid close attention, making facial expressions of concern, consternation and confusion. She set about looking for "the blue cart." She clacked away on her shoes, returning only to tell us the mysterious blue mode of transport was nowhere to be found.

Is this a comedy?

Then, a gal appears with a dolly. She was, as LiLi describes, "struggling with her high heels." Had I noticed this, gentle readers, you would color me gay.

It is North Hall, a fairly large hall. Where to set up? Now, there is something very crucial in some gigs that determines where to set up the playing space. This is known in the trade as "The Scooby Factor." To scooby, means to leave with utmost discretion and speed. You do not want to have to break down while some suit is making their "brief remarks" and you most certainly do not want to have to sit through the speech if you are not being paid to do so.

Last year, we were stage left. LiLi, most wisely assessing the situation, realized that stage left meant no quiet scooby and its horrid implication that we would be trapped. Stage right was in the line of kitchen traffic. A huge mistake. We decided to set up close to the door. Now, I think you're getting it. Head in the clouds? Not us.

We waited as "wobbly in her high heels" girl told us to set up anywhere we liked; a fact we had already assumed. LiLi went looking for a maintenance guy and soon we had power.

We auto piloted our way through the same repertoire we've had for decades while waiting for the VIPs to arrive and be seated.

Wobbly came by and I asked, "How are we doing? It's not too loud, is it?" She had to stop and wonder what I was talking about, but the light came on and she gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. Lisa realized that I had just done this for fun and to be a devil.

After a brief brown nosing intro for the Guv, the all-too-not-brief remarks, the fumbling of index cards, a brief return to music while the entres was brought out.

Then more ceremony which was our cue to start packing up. Scooby, baby, scooby! Oh joy! Time to go home.

On the way home, Lisa stated the truth: "That gig is more about getting there, setting up than it is about actual playing."

You betcha, darling. We may not be living anyone's dream or fantasy, but we just played a paying gig for little hassle.

And that's just fine with me.

I think.

It's Just a Damn Gig

"A practical difficulty with presenting systems of explanation to the head is that, once the head knows, it believes itself to know." Fripp

Every gig is a trial. Every one a test.

Last night, packed into the tiny local restaurant, Lisa and I played for a few friends and some lonely looking customers. People are not quite sure what to do with live music in a restaurant. Hell, I'm not sure. It's background, pure and simple. No problem, but still it's nice to have some familiar faces at any gig. That always helps.

She was a bit nervous. I told her that there was no reason at all to be nervous. We have playing together for decades and that experience always comes to bear in uncertain circumstances. We were a bit more "on stage" than our usual invisibility. I think we did ok. The purpose is always to prove that you still "have it," if to no one but yourself.

After reflecting on my 38 years as a guitar player, one thing's for certain: I am far more relaxed about the proceedings. I let the music happen and try to get my head out of the way; leaving the ear and fingers to guide me. The conscious mind sometimes gets in the way, trying to direct every move, over evaluating every little flaw. Relaxation has a very profound effect on music making.

When she and I began to play in the late 80's these long and lonesome gigs out at Coonskin Park's "restaurant" many moons ago, I was just learning how to handle jazz and schmaltz. After all, I had been a classical guitar purist for about 8 years. They didn't teach me that in school, people. I can't imagine how stiff my playing was at that time playing ballads like God Bless the Child or a swinging My Favorite Things.

After I had had enough of bands and playing in clubs in the 90's, I took a sabbatical. The joy of playing had just up and left. I was sick of it all and just let it go. That happens more often that people would believe. Like anything, being a musician is full of struggles and sometimes you get fried, tired of the constant bullshit and the little voice in your head constantly whispering, "See? I told you so. You're just not any good. You know it. I know it. Quit faking like you can play." The thought of playing repulsed me.

Slowly, I have made my way back. I am well aware that all this is just local and I'm never going to grace the cover of any magazine nor win any award. Never getting past weddings, clubs or he occasional restaurant. And all that is just fine for me. I just want the respect of my peers and an audience that won't throw tomatoes at me.

Some groupies would help as well. I mean, shit.

"Pale In" Comparison

I do not think myself a wordsmith. This article has now confirmed my suspicions.

Vanity Fair has a rather provocative and educational article about how VF editor's would have corrected Sarah Palin's loopy resignation speech. Regardless of your political bent, you have to admit how amatuerish nature of the original and how these editor's could have whipped it into coherant shape.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/palin-speech-edit-200907

Blow Thy Hole

I always knew that classical music snobs held certain attitudes. It is a rare treat to see someone write something so openly snobbish for all to see. Let's have some fun, shall we? My humble comments in Bold.

Financial Times FT.com
Is classical music trying to be fashionable?

By Andrew Clark
Published: May 29 2009 16:22 Last updated: June 4 2009 07:38

There is a lot of noise in classical music today. It’s not the noise we associate with the louder forms of pop and rock. Nor is it the noise of percussive or electronic effects that have become a significant part of the classical composer’s armoury over the past 50 years.

There's a dig if ever I've read one. I smell jackass already. I would suggest that most orchestras don't program the old school '60s idea of orchestra with tape anymore than they program much music beyond Late Romanticism. So, pop and rock are noise? I get it. Keep going, chumly, I am getting excited here.

It’s a different kind of noise – call it “noises off” – that, in the eyes and ears of hard-core classical aficionados, is threatening to drown the music. It’s the sound of classical music trying to be fashionable, relevant to the internet generation.

I know where this is going. And another dig. The internet generation? Isn't that everyone? Isn't that like saying the "automobile generation"? He's also suggesting that this is dumbing down to pander to those damn kids.

The latest example is the YouTube Orchestra, which was auditioned and selected on the web. It made its debut last month at Carnegie Hall in New York, one of the world’s most prestigious venues, after a mere two days’ rehearsal. No one in classical music dared say this was a scratch orchestra breaking a cardinal rule of the art form: the centuries-old practice of patiently creating a style and blending disparate voices, essential for the high-quality rendition of great music. No, the YouTube Orchestra was ground-breaking and reassuringly democratic. It was definitely not elitist, a word that has become fashionably pejorative but which aptly describes the creative processes underpinning all great works of art.

This is really awkward writing and smacks of an amateur out of his depth. Translation: They didn't practice enough and this shows the decline of Western civilization. And, what does elitism have to do with creativity? In other words, only a chosen few, a superior strata of society, which we dare not name ourselves to be superior, can claim to understand or appreciate great music.

Whether or not the YouTube Orchestra turns out to be a gimmick, it made a lot of noise in the media. In that respect it is part of a trend: the classical music industry has woken up to the fact that it must shout to be heard amid the competing noises of contemporary culture. That means downplaying the demands and subtleties and complexities of the art form and, instead, emphasising the things that make it look sexy: youth, cross-over, consumer choice, talent contests, downloads, the very same sales techniques used by popular culture.

There's that sense of entitlement that arises all the time in classical music. Classical music or musicians for that matter, shouldn't have to work on marketing because somehow that is beneath this majestic art form. The quality of classical music alone should bring peoples in droves to concerts. What century is this guy living in?

Has classical music suddenly become a follower, or even a victim, of fashion? The very word “classical” implies something old and immutable, far removed from passing fads and fancies as if it has always been there. Just look at the temples of performance-culture – London’s Royal Opera House, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, even the relatively modern Metropolitan Opera in New York – and you can’t mistake the message: these are museums of music, pillars of continuity, guardians of a repertoire that seems fixed and above fashion.

"Temples?" Is this music or religion? Oh no! Classical music may have to work a little bit to gain a younger audience. Perish the thought! We have built museums for these dusty treasures; great pillars and "guardians" of culture. What do we need to guard it against? That's no attitude that's going to bring in audiences. Museums? Is that what it is? Something to be preserved behind glass? I thought it was a living, vibrant art form still engaging people. Excuse me.

That's the trouble: fixed and relegated to a museum in some people's eyes. As one listener reportedly said, " I don't listen to any music written after 1850." There are countless examples of how the now sanctified composers were once ridiculed in their time for being charlatans or of no talent. They were not fashionable in their time. This guy needs to read more history. I think he learned about music from a cereal box.

That’s true, up to a point. The ultimate judge of this or that symphony’s quality is not a weekly pop chart or a Classic FM playlist, but posterity. Great music rises above fads and fashions. It may have been written in a style that was fashionable at the time of composition (even Mozart and Wagner built on the stylistic precepts of their age) but it is music that people have wanted to play and listen to ever since.

This is so laughable. We are preserving music for a generation not yet born. The last bastion of classical music are public radio stations. We are hands down the number one promoter of classical music. Would Little Lord Snoot be surprised to find that some stations actually use playlists and limit the rotation to a limited number of chosen pieces. Even more horrified would he be to learn that sometimes software chooses that selections based on set parameters. Sounds like a pop station or FM?

That is a popular assumption. It is not the whole truth. Looking around the world’s opera houses and concert halls today, you could easily assume Handel and Mahler have always been popular. You might also assume, from the scant recognition accorded Haydn in this anniversary year (200 years since his death), that he has always lagged behind the elite. You would be wrong.
There is no such thing as a repertoire fixed in stone.

Yes indeed there is. Just look at every major orchestra across the country and you will see the same pieces being played over and over again. Of course, there are some orchestras who take chances and play new music, but the old war horses aren't going anywhere. Haydn lagged behind the elite? What elite? The Prince for whom he was composer in residence?

Classical music may not be subject to the “here today, gone tomorrow” fashions in clothing or pop; its timelines are decades-long, rather than weekly or yearly but it is just as prone to cultural shifts and trends. Taste in classical music is a highly complex reaction involving what audiences hear and respond to, what orchestras, conductors and soloists enjoy playing, and what happens to be available. A century ago people only heard the live music of the day They listened in the concert hall or bought a piano score and played it at home. There was a single tradition, which was subject to accretions that were rejected or developed, and which then moved on. It was like a corridor with a few rooms off to the side. Today we live in a house of many floors, accessible to everyone. Thanks to the internet revolution, you can click on any type of music from the past eight centuries within 30 seconds.

What this part he wrote while he was stoned? This seems a little disjointed.

“We’ve been slow to recognise what a radical departure this is,” says Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of London’s Barbican Centre. “What people are choosing from is far more random and wide-ranging than in the past. The sheer availability of it all makes people insecure because they no longer turn to a single source to dictate their taste.”

Oh no! No high minister of music to lead the dull masses to high culture? Egads! What shall we do? People have choices! I would never assume that people need to have their musical taste dictated to them. No matter how much money and marketing is thrown at an artist, people can smell a phony; even 14 year olds.

One positive result of this trend is that music with no connection to the long-familiar classical tradition can enjoy a new success, as the 12th-century composer Hildegard of Bingen has done. But there’s also a flash-in-the-pan effect, through the internet and television, that can turn any kind of music into a sudden hit. It has included an amateur opera singer winning the first Britain’s Got Talent competition, a blind soprano securing a recording contract on the back of her success in Operatunity and a comedian conducting a professional orchestra at the Proms, as Sue Perkins did last year after winning Maestro, another television talent contest.

So, internet good sometimes? But internet bad others? Mongo confused.

Exactly how this sort of overnight exposure will impact on classical music in the long term is anyone’s guess.

I'm guessing internet exposure for classical music is a great plus. There's far more there than contests. Has this guy ever done a YouTube search?

Fashion is a reflection of what excites a majority at any one time. It thrives on herd instinct, born of a fear of making individual judgments that could be exposed as “wrong”.

Seriously, is this guy from the 19th century? This has to be a hoax.

By definition it is fickle. It’s easy to be taken in by the noise, as the classical world was when record companies, on the cusp of the CD revolution and The Three Tenors, tried to market opera singers and classical instrumentalists like pop stars. For a while it succeeded, but we have since seen a return to the primacy of the live event. Classical music’s longevity gives it an advantage over popular culture: it has had time to winnow out fashions that didn’t last and turn those that did into long-term movements.

This is another prevailing attitude. Anything that is popular is lacking substance because the masses follow the lowest common denominator in culture. While this is still true at Lynrd Skynrd concerts, some things actually has substance. Domingo said of that project that as long more people came to the opera, he was happy. "Primacy" of what? Wasn't that a live concert? I have news about popular music being a flash in the pan: the Beatles Sgt.Pepper's album is 42 years old. That album will remain a landmark masterpiece for generations to come. Yes, kids, some popular music actually has substance. And oh, there's a style called jazz as well. Perhaps you need to get out a bit more.

And by the way, when Sgt. Pepper came out, one critic called it "fraudulent." Obviously another guy that liked to puff himself up.

But it is as open as any other cultural activity to changing taste. Musical history is littered with it, the concert format being one example. Unlike today’s concert-goers, who expect to be in their seats for no longer than about two hours, audiences a century ago were accustomed to four or five-hour marathons. For much of the post-war era programming was dominated by the overture-concerto-symphony format. That’s now old hat. Half a century ago no self-respecting conductor would have dreamt of speaking to the audience, or introducing the music by way of explanation. Styles of performance have also changed.

The whole world has changed buddy. Maybe you didn't get the 411. People lead extremely busy lives today with multiple choices for entertainment. You cannot compare one era to another. that's ridiculous.

Until recently no one raised an eyebrow about “arrangements” of standard masterpieces. After all, Mozart made his own version of Handel’sMessiah, Mahler re-orchestrated Schumann, Strauss altered Mozart, Schoenberg doctored Brahms.

So?

Today, thanks to the impact of the early music movement, which stresses the primacy of source material, the composer’s writ has become sacred. The fashion now is to follow the original markings in the score, even though composers of previous generations regularly tampered with their own and others’ music. In the next 50 years musicians will probably move on to a different way of interpreting the classics, just as they will find another way of presenting them.

"the composer’s writ has become sacred" I think this is untrue. Early music ensembles include improvisation as well as scholarship. John Eliot Gardiner is bringing us a new Beethoven, Schubert, etc. Interpretation is the lifeblood of the classics. Him likes that word primacy. Must have gotten a thesaurus for his birthday.

Taste changes with the Zeitgeist. The same applies to the choice of music we play and listen to. Today Così fan tutte ranks as Mozart’s most popular opera, but for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was barely played. Its “modern” tale of promiscuity offended haut-bourgeois sensibilities; its music, now recognised as sublime, was dismissed by the Victorians as inferior.

Musical taste changes, what's the point? Methinks you are just showing off and off point.

Handel’s operas languished for the best part of two centuries, judged to be artificial and repetitive. Today they are all the rage.

So, let me see, sometimes people misjudge music of their own time? Really? Didn't know that. Huh.

Their revival has coincided not just with the early music boom, spotlighting the pre-1800 era, but also with the proliferation of overlooked repertoire on CD and a trend towards smaller, cleaner voices. There’s one other reason for Handel’s return to popularity in the opera house: his characters echo our 21st-century emotional dilemmas.

What emotional dilemmas? This is nonsense filler.

Just as Handel’s star has risen, others have waned. If you study the names on the façade of the Palais Garnier in Paris, you’ll find Auber, Meyerbeer, Spontini and Halévy, composers whose music appealed to mid-19th-century taste but is now gathering dust. Posterity is ruthless in weeding out music that panders to fashion.

You keep using fashion and I see anorexic women in feathered outfits strutting down a catwalk to techno. So, if a composer goes out of fashion, this is bad? I'm not sure where you are going and I'm damn sure you don't know yourself.

One of the most accurate barometers of musical taste is the BBC Proms. In the pre-first world war period, the top 10 composers by number of performances included Gounod, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Saint-Saens and Sullivan, all of whom, 100 years later, are lucky to get a single hearing in any Prom season (exceptionally, Mendelssohn gets a boost in 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth).

Until the late 1960s Beethoven symphonies never had fewer than 40 performances in any five-year period. In the past five years there have been just 19. By the 1980s Sibelius and Tchaikovsky, previously popular, had been marginalized but Mahler and Bruckner, whose music barely featured in the first 60 years, had become a staple, reflecting a trend towards bigger, louder music. Since 2004 more Shostakovich symphonies have been played than Mahler or Beethoven. Youth orchestras and non-classical western music are an increasingly visible part of the mix, another reflection of cultural trends.

Of course, the Proms are more than an annual popularity poll. Their role is to lead taste as well as mirror it. “If we were only subject to audience taste, we’d end up with a hall of fame of 20 pieces,” says Roger Wright, director of the Proms. “A core gets repeated but we’re funded in part in order to allow us to keep the unfamiliar and the new in the mix.”

The Proms are to lead taste? I thought they were just concerts that people enjoyed. This guy is too worried. Maybe his fav composers aren't so popular on the concert stage anymore. Maybe he thinks they should have consulted him on the programming. Believe it, there are misfits out there who believe they have a God given responsibility to lead us cattle to the higher grounds of culture that we are simply incapable of discovering for ourselves.

If state subsidisation has kept orchestras and opera houses immune to sharp swings of fashion, why has taste continued to change so radically? Trends can’t exist without trendsetters, charismatic creators and communicators who capture the spirit of the times. They dominate pop and couture, but they also have a huge impact on classical musicals. Think of Leonard Bernstein waving the flag for Mahler in the 1950s, or Simon Rattle more recently awakening interest in the early 20th century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. What started out as a fashion led to a change in taste.

ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Personalities can just as easily influence by intimidation. In the postwar era the widely respected, and feared, musical theorist Theodor Adorno almost single-handedly killed Sibelius’s music in Germany: there’s still a prejudice against it there.

A music theorist was feared? Must have been a badass dude. Only in Germany.

In the best, ie most discerning, areas of classical music, there is a sense of long-term growth and development. The idea that you can create an orchestra from the internet to play a five-minute piece by Chinese composer Tan Dun makes a great story, but few in the music industry see it as the future of music. What is happening is that the broad tradition of orchestras, conductors and festivals – a tradition that has evolved over 100 years and more – is trying to digest the explosive impact of technology. There’s nothing peculiar to classical music about this. Every field of life is experiencing the same thing.

Is English his first language? Seriously. If you took a random set of players from every major orchestra in the world and told them in two hours they were going to play Beethoven's 7th symphony, do you think they would be worried? Poor Tan Dun: taking one for the team.

The classical tradition won’t disappear overnight, but it may gradually morph in ways we may be slow to notice. Should we be alarmed? Will everything we value and respect start to crumble?

All because of one internet performance? Wha?

“You have to distinguish between the outer shell – the marketing and presentation – and the heart of it, the soul of the musical experience that the performer transmits to the listener. That part doesn’t change much,” says Jessica Lustig, founding partner at 21C Media Group, a New York-based arts consultancy. “The effectiveness of this communication has little to do with the outer shell, apart from encouraging people to come into the hall who might not otherwise do so.”

So, yes, change is happening faster in classical music than it did in the past, but still nothing like as fast as other forms of culture. There are continuities in classical music that we value and respect, and which make it relatively immune to short-termism. In that sense classical music remains deeply unfashionable. That’s why it has lasted.

So, no more under rehearsed YouTube orchestra at Carnegie? Is that that whole point of this blowhard, showoff, snotty little article?

Andrew Clark is the FT’s chief classical music critic

and he is a real good one as well.

I Like to Watch

I like to watch.

No. Just kidding.

Not really. I do like the visual arts. They fascinate me. Often, paintings and drawings take me to mental places that I think even film can't reach. Film is always about moving forward, whereas a painting remains static, but your feelings about it change; even moment to moment. Or at least, that is the intention.

There are places I feel really comfortable in and art galleries are one of them. Or, for that matter, museums as well. Inside these sanctuaries, far away from the real world, are the places of imagination, creativity and sometimes, really funny stuff.

(Let me point out here that I find the idea of the snooty, pretentious culture vampires mulling over paintings at art openings something very appalling. I hate this whole attitude of boho elitism. Eno has pointed out that art audiences "have to act jaded" and I so agree. Like the classical music snoots, I have no patience with these folks. Sorry.)

On the web, I find myself surfing these artsy places and sometimes the results are amazing.

I'm sure I kept this ViennaFair site because it sure has that combination of pretentious trash (colored balls? wha?), outrageous stuff designed to outrage and some very good work. Real fun to peruse.

Amy Crehore art follows a general theme of playfulness with a dash of naughty.

Jonathan Viner I found through Amy's site. Just the right amount of dark and twisted. I am a bit puzzled why naked women with headphones is art, but who am I to judge?

Fancy the surreal? This guy's work is out there and very funny at times.

Justin Micheal Jenkins, the guy who designed the show logo, is a favorite. Detailed, surreal, exact, flowing.

One of the best sources of all interesting things is Boing Boing. Most folks know about this eclectic site that has so many wonderful images, artists and ideas on it.

Of course, bad is good as well; especially really bad.

The merch is hilarious. MOBA mugs! Perfect.

Real Horrorshow

This is Bill. Bill does local pro wrestling.

I don't know why.

Perhaps he likes it when: "the red, red krovy flows real 'orrorshow."

Set Your Rum On Stun

The Velvets once again have actually rehearsed again. Well , not the full band , but pretty close.

Remember kids, this band broke up pretty hard and stayed that way for sixteen years. We have dubbed it the Rum Tour, but it should be called the All is Forgiven and Forgotten Tour.

Last night, in the shadowy studio of Live Mix, a quorum of original Velvet players plus the engine room (rhythm section) of Kai and Brian, we knocked through some tunes. It's funny, but these same four VBs are the same I saw in my mind as being the four players who would unify this band. I never knew why or how, I just had an image come into my mind one day.

Rehearsal is chaos in the form of fun. "Let's go over that one again." "What are the chords in that one section?" "Hey, you guys want to try this one?" Too fast, I need more detail and time to absorb this stuff. The players were focused and it wasn't about one person trying to dominate the music, just adding your own part without stepping on the other players.

I had one of those rare musical moments when, and this is tough to explain to people, I had become my hands. Fripp says that wherever our attention is engaged, that's where we are, regardless of our physical surroundings. At one point, the only thing that I was aware of was my hands. It wasn't a guitar, nor music, nothing but a singular presence of hands. I know that sounds wacky, but sometimes when you do something for so long, it can become more than the actual activity; it becomes a meditation. Most of the time, I feel earthbound, chained in irons and all too aware of the shortcomings in my playing.

And, no, there wasn't any rum to be found.

But that's likely to change.