Get Thee To An Archive

Hey - you may already know about this, but indulge me and my coffee buzz for a minute. I was surfing www.archive.org/ for some classical music that was in the public domain. I needed to use a snippet of it for a bookstore scene in a film that I’m doing the audio design for. While surfing the audio files, I stumbled across an old room filled floor to ceiling with dusty boxes of 78 rpm records, digitally captured and preserved. Check out this Glenn Miller:

www.archive.org/details/GlennMillerOrchestra-101-110/

This is pretty bitchin' stuff - it's like rooting around in your grandmother's attic without getting dirty! Here's the master page:

www.archive.org/details/78rpm/

There is all sorts of stuff here in the public domain: Cuban music, classical, big band era, old-time Appalachian music- the list goes on and on. I've been using http://www.archive.org/ for Grateful Dead downloads for YEARS. I can't believe that I've been ignoring this stuff for that long.....shame on me and my one track mind.

Neal and Stopping

Here's to Neal. He's a guy I never met, but he's a guy who had an influence over some of my decision making in my younger days.

"I swore, for all those Saddiday nights I missed when I was in San Quentin I'd stay up every Saturday night for two full years to make up." -Neal Cassady

And boy, did he ever work his ass off to try to make up for all those lost Saturdays. Neal exemplified non-stop, and that reminds me of a stupid joke I like to tell over and over until most people walk away, disgusted at my lack of creativity: Remember folks, Drugs don't kill - it's the STOPPING part that kills! There are a lot of stories about how Neal died, but most of it is conjecture. The certificate from the authorities in Mexico says 'all systems congested'. That about sums it up: Neal just stopped. It makes little sense to paint a mythic picture of how Neal's body stopped- the damned thing just crapped out, and that's all that needs to be said. To further drive home the stopping thing, here's a quote from a guy who also stopped:

"I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die." - Jerry Garcia

Now, one might conclude from the above that I'm a morbid bastard. Quite the contrary - I'm inviting you to go out and live life in a robust and full manner, free from the worry of that inevitable day when things just stop. It's Go Time!

Mystery Toe Gap

Check out this amazing toe gap on my feet. I never paid attention to this until my girlfriend pointed it out to me a few years ago. Suddenly a mystery developed: why are my first two toes not into hanging out with my last three toes? I have several theories:

1. In a former life, I was a member of the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon river basin, and my toe gap helped me to climb trees and navigate the rigors of the rain forest with ease.

2. While sleepwalking, I love to smoke big cigars with my feet.

3. I had webbed toes as a newborn, and the doctor who sliced the webbed skin from between my toes took too much. The trauma was so great that my mother never told me what happened.

4. As a newborn, someone removed my sixth toe. See comment 3 above.

With a toe gap like this, one would think that I'm an agile motherfucker, sleek and surefooted as a gazelle. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, as a child, when I played soccer, baseball or some other game with the neighborhood kids, I wasn't picked last - oftentimes I wasn't even picked - they would play a man short and I would watch from the sidelines or go home and eat Twinkies, read science fiction books, and grow boy boobies.

Hopi clown makeup

I just found some old photos. Here’s a picture of me in Hopi clown makeup, courtesy of my friend Margaret. Margaret had stumbled across a book on Hopi clowns and she thought it would be an interesting thing to do to my head as artwork for a CD I was working on at the time. This was about 11 years ago, right after I had completely wrecked a disc in my lower back and spent a number of months in bed healing. I had just moved into a shabby house in a not-so-good section of Phoenixville. The deal I cut with the landlord was that I would help with the house remodeling in exchange for reduced rent.

What seemed like a good idea turned into a summer of hell as I spent most of my time lying in bed, watching horrible TV and listening to the somewhat frequent police activity occurring outside the house. I could get up here and there to fix some microwaveable dinners, shower and go to the bathroom, but I could only manage five or ten minutes at a time. The living room had roofing material laid out on the floor, and there was an old car seat that I would use as a resting place between the kitchen and the stairway to the second floor. The only room that had been completed was the bedroom.

Needless to say, since I spent a lot of time lying in bed, I wound up writing a lot of songs in that house. There was nothing else to do there.

That's right. I'm an inventor

That's right. I invent things. check out this ingenious image.

That dude sure is enjoying himself while watching his Ipod HANDS FREE.