The will to reconnect

January 13, 2010 in Music Business, Uncategorized, mobile tech | Comments

It doesn’t seem right to have the purchase of a new device be the reason for me to return to a long form blog post here on PIBC. I’d hoped it would be a return to art, music or poetry; still, an opportunity to share my thoughts about this needs to go beyond the restraints of micro blogging and, though long dormant, I still pay for this space.

Right before Christmas, my long suffering Blackberry Pearl 8120 went on a trip around the inside of an HE washer. Saturated and well spun, it took a few days for the moisture and confusion to begin departing the chassis. Like an elderly man, it recognized the media card, then didn’t, then did. It froze like a potted plant in Calgary. When it began to work again it would reboot in the middle of calls, the middle of words.

I spent more than a few years traveling the world with the spartan operating system, yanking out the battery on crashes and freezes, using other peoples workarounds in order to attempt to be real time with those on laptops and other devices. I can’t begin to tell you how amazed I was with the Blackberry push technology, the speed and reliability it had for email. I once found myself within a Roman Coliseum in Pula, Croatia in 2007, sending an email from my laptop and hearing the whoosh of the Apple Mail notification followed in one second by the vibration of my Blackberry. Think about the routing for a second; My laptop to the production office wifi to the local Croatian telco to the internet to Google in the states to Blackberry in Canada to Tmo to the cell provider in Pula to my Pearl in about one second. That’s insane.

The sad part began as the real time revolution began, some of us using Google Talk to follow our Twitter stream through a mysterious and legendary myth called “Track“. This would be May 2008 and I stood in Dublin, Ireland at the RDS Arena, an equestrian center used for concerts for many years. I put a few keywords into Track that day and watched in amazement as realtime tweets came out of the 20,000 people in front of me and into my phone. In experimenting with certain keywords in certain newscycles, I was able to crash my phone in some spectacular ways.

Well, now Track is just a story early adopters tell their grandchildren when they want them to fall asleep but it was a clear sign to me of how underpowered handheld devices were for the oncoming data stream. The Blackberry became clearly web challenged as the first iterations of the iPhone showed that the phone was (clearly) the least of its features. I, like many felt attached to the microscopic keyboard, the ability to have multiple conversations going on, IM, Text, Email, photos going out and coming in. I got to a point when I knew a crash was coming, a flash site locking the hourglass in an endless topple, the battery removal and reinsertion just another keystroke, doing it all without looking, the reboot period just a commercial break of sorts.

As contrarian as I was about the iPhone not being what I needed or wanted and ATT being what it is, I bought an iPod Touch last year for a two fold reason. First, I was going to use it as a Skype phone around the Pacific Rim (I did and it was quite able) and also so that I wouldn’t be totally ignorant of the OS experience. It’s a great media player, logical, small and reliable. The App aspect was slow to become as important but it was rather remarkable to have the mobile experience of getting the software you need when you needed it.

Oddly, I ended up using the Blackberry on my Pacific trip for 2 things and one was remarkable and the other, expensive. The Wifi/UMA section of the Pearl made it possible to turn off the cell broadcast antenna, hit free wifi on the streets in Australia and Japan and make all the free international calls I wanted. Find a McDonalds, stand outside, join the hotspot, wait for the red UMA indicator and dial away. The other was the casual data access I made in Australia over the cell system, which for YEARS in Europe never got metered or billed and created a wallet breaking roaming charge I’d never incurred before. Expensive lesson.

So here I am a week into my Android experience, comparing it to my BB experience (the Jensen Interceptor of the internet, minus the speed) and to my Apple knowledge (not a deity, not a demon, just a really well crafted only show in town). In my industry, we deal with multiple operating systems from many vendors. We have some standards like MIDI and some formats that became prevalent so that the competition would include it just in order to be used. The real parallel is to the digital rack gear of the 80’s and 90’s, when companies like Roland, Yamaha, Korg and Lexicon had very clear ideas of how you were to navigate through the endless pages of parameters with a 2 line LED screen and a scroll wheel and “enter” button.

It wasn’t unusual to work for people who stayed with one kind of gear because trying to figure out the OS was just such a waste of time. The use of the Atari ST computer along with the early Macs began to bring a more uniform GUI experience to musical gear. As music software for sequencing, programming and recording evolved, the Mac desktop became the palette that many techs and musicians became comfortable with (to be fair, some of the best keyboard techs I know were multi-platform and did a great deal of work on Windows, due to the huge market share they held in those days).

I mention this because there were moments back then when you had a moment of  “oh, so THAT was what the programmer was thinking when he did it this way” when you went from a Yamaha piece to a Roland piece. I’ve had a few of those with the Nexus One and the Android platform.

There were early moments when the lack of uniformity and shortcuts built into the desktop, the browser and a few of the apps began to sour me from the N1 as I compared it to the soft key dance of the iPhone/iPod.

“Why move the clutch and the brake? I’ve always driven this way…”

In Formula One auto racing, the controlling of gear shifts have gone from the old school 3 pedal manual H pattern experience, to semi-automatic, sequential shifting to hand controller, computer clutching gear selection. The steering wheels on these cars are more like high end game controllers…

(take a look at this explanation…)

understanding_formula_one_2008_steering_wheel

than what they were before…

A back button that can get you out of any path a step at a time is not a bad thing. You want to bail out, the home window button is always there. Having a dedicated  menu button work on all areas is helpful and educational too. The trackball, though I’ve been using them for 20 years, is a little bit lost on this device but provides a 3D message indicator to see across the room.

I was really bugged by some of Google’s lack of widgets for the services I use. Then I realized that they use the browser as the engine for many things. Bookmark the mobile version of Google Reader for instance, put a shortcut on the desktop and you’re golden. No memory for a widget, nothing to load. It already lives on the cloud.

Google Voice has been mentioned as being the big draw here and I will not be a detractor. Being able to funnel your voicemail, texts and numbers into the Google eco-system for someone who travels as much as I do is a big winner. I’ve gone weeks without checking my voicemail overseas because I was afraid I’d lose my house for roaming charges. It’s a non-issue now as long as I have an internet connection at work or the hotel. Also in the very loud environment I exist in, seeing Google’s best guess at the transcription of the voicemail is very handy; you could put my phone through a Marshall amp an I’d still not get the message. Now I can…and the spamku errors of the lightly grayed guesses are very entertaining.

It’s interesting to see how Google’s apps differ from Loic’s or Amazons, let alone the developers who are giving it their best shot. There are those that are missing entirely at this point, Buddyfeed, Kindle, Tweetie and the like. With an increased user pool, developers will make it happen and Google will tweak more sugar in and out of their pastry named systems.

A few apps have been crashy like Ustream but for a person who carried a Crashberry for many years, it’s unreal to have gone a week without pulling the battery… though I could if I wanted to or needed to. I can also carry a second one for heavy data flow days…sorry.

I am a little disappointed that no accessories were ready when they released it; skins, spare batteries, chargers, cradles, etc.

I am enjoying having a high powered mobile device that does nearly everything I need it to. I’m about to give it a partial test by leaving the country and shifting to primarily wifi  for a few weeks. I’ll let you know how that goes.

In the hands of a master

April 9, 2009 in Music, Uncategorized | Comments

I have read many accounts of musicians and non-musicians over the years of the moment when their paradigm was shifted, their mind blown, the door opened by hear a particular song or artist. Some of these are typical while others are more obscure. The Beatles, Coltrane, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Hendrix… they all end up being mentioned a lot. I was raised in a drummer’s home and actually went to school to be a drummer; you’d think that the person who did it for me would be one.

Actually, I have to admit the person who did it for me was Jeff Beck.

In 1976 I was listening to either WCCC or WHCN out of Hartford, CT, the two rock stations we could pick up in Western Mass. They played classic rock and as it was in those days, the formats were a lot looser…as were the DJ’s and the program directors. They would on Sunday mornings play 4 blocks of a half hour between 10am and noon of an artist, uninterrupted. Sure, it might be Lynyrd Skynrd or Led Zep but sometimes it was something new, different and really good. I was exposed to NRBQ, Nils Lofgren, Chick Corea (with Steve Gadd no less!) and other acts you will never hear on American commercial terrestrial radio again.

I can’t remember the song that was first but I would have to bet it was “Blue Wind”, the duel between Jeff Beck and Jan Hammer. These guys were fierce, loud and apparently from another planet. It was actually in rotation, a guitar instrumental with trading solos, Jan’s jagged yet perfect drumming, outer space synths and that guitar, that guitar that didn’t sound like any other. I bought “Wired” probably at White Knight Records in Great Barrington and brought it home.

The songs and performances of that album are part of my DNA. The liner notes, the photos, the Epic logo… they all are as fresh now as they were then, my comprehension a little better now of the technical aspect of it but the visceral, emotional, primal connection was there from the get go. This guy had attitude, attack, delicacy and recklessness in spades. The album “Jeff Beck Live with the Jan Hammer Group” came next and might have come off my turntable once or twice in the next 2 years. I actually wore that one out and bought a second. His breaking into “Train Kept a Rollin’” in “Blue Wind” was so fucking gnarly I want to play it for every young guitar player who thinks he’s a bad ass to show him what a Strat can do.

I was lucky enough to see him the first time on the “There and Back” tour in 1980 at the Curry-Hicks Cage/ University of Mass in Amherst. That album and particular quartet was a pretty serious extension of the direction that “Wired” and “Blow by Blow” started, maybe a bit more slick but still a sight to see. The Cage was an old hockey rink which the local fire marshals didn’t allow smoking in probably due to its flammable appearance. They had college ushers running around with little sand buckets grabbing cigarettes and joints away from the crowd. The thoroughly mundane Michael Stanley Band opened and then there was a lengthy delay until Beck hit the stage. I know it was long because they played 3 entire albums before the lights went down and, despite my ingestion of pollutants, I remember all of them: Little Feat “Down on the Farm”, UK’s debut album and their second, “Danger Money” (funny what we remember and forget, isn’t it?)

The lights went down and out they came. I was already a huge fan of the drummer Simon Phillips and have continued to be intrigued by Beck’s relationship to drummers. They seem to fuel his fire and the good ones send him into the upper atmosphere.  It was loud. Anyone who has seen Jeff play know that his presence is a combination of limitless swagger and indifference, so many of the licks and moves he created, if not modified for his generation and beyond. The term “Reckless Precision” I first heard as an album title for Tuck Andress but it sums up Jeff’s approach sometimes. He’s not infallible or perfect, he reaches, he pushes his guitar to the limit and coaxes and thrashes the most delicate notes and the most obscene wails and crashes out of it.

What would be considered a show off move ends up being the perfect punctuation for a phrase, like finishing the line on  “Freeway Jam” by bouncing the butt of his Strat off the floor for a tone like a 4 car pileup. He also knows as many ways to bend a note as anyone I’ve ever seen, between his mastery of the whammy bar, using his palm to move the floating bridge, his able fingers, the slide or inverting the guitar, sticking the headstock into the floor and leaning into it (don’t try this at home!!!).

In the hour and a half he played that night he did it all. But the funny thing is this memory from 29 years ago was nearly 20 years into his career and kids, he ain’t done yet.

As the music business began to bloat and then whither, Epic would release a record every now and then, a strange anomaly akin to the old roster at Warner Brothers, when Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker kept prestige creative acts on their roster despite their limited sales. Jeff’s album “Flash” was an attempt to commercialize him in an era of MTV, while he made appearances with Tina Turner and Rod Stewart, produced by Arthur Baker. It didn’t really appeal to either side of the fans, the fusion nuts or the music video pariahs. It still had glimmers of his fire, though heavily coated in 80’s dreck.

When “Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop” came out, all was then well with the world. A trio album with drummer Terry Bozzio and keyboard player Tony Hymas, it left the space that his guitar needed to breathe, twist and burn. The monster riffs of “Big Block” still kick the ass of anyone in its way. The real find was a track called “Where Were You”,  his take on a melody he became infatuated with after hearing the Bulgarian Woman’s Choir Le Mystere des voix Bulgares. The most vocal of his performances, the trem bar that is so overused and dive bombed by others becomes the breath and pain of his ethereal voice. For guitar players, it’s a master lesson in the virtually impossible. He was still showing the youngins who was boss if they had the brains or the balls to listen. The tour with the bass-less trio was a double bill with Stevie Ray Vaughan, a classic pairing that I sadly missed in LA as it was the only day in 3 months I had a gig.

They say if you want to get Jeff to walk away from a conversation, start talking about guitars. If you want to get his attention, bring him a part from a 1932 Ford. He loves cars, old hot rods, working on them and getting his hands dirty. He has nearly damaged those amazing hands doing it and to me, it would be a tragedy except he would have been doing what he truly loves when he’s not onstage.
He has taken his interest in electronica and made some records which sound modern and purely Jeff at the same time. He has been touring a bit more often and has had some rather amazing band line ups from a musician standpoint, people like Jennifer Batten, Pino Palladino and Vinnie Colaiuta have had the chance to tour with him. His current band is remarkable, with Vinnie, the young Australian female bassist Tal Wilkenfeld and Jason Rebello. A recording taken from a week of shows in London has been released called “performing this week…live at Ronnie Scott’s”  which shows he has just gotten better and better. There is now also a DVD from the same club run which includes some guests like Eric Clapton, Joss Stone and Imogen Heap. The real attraction here is getting to see what Jeff can do with the guitar, stuff that mere mortals can attempt to do but never will flow like the beautiful liquid fire that seems to emit from his fingertips.

I highly recommend either or both of these documents to musician or just plain listener alike. If you don’t like instrumental music or “jazz-rock fusion”, don’t let it stop you. There is something for everyone… unless you don’t like electric guitar. And in that case… there’s nothing I can do for you.

On the weekend of April 4th, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. A ceremony of presentations and performances occurred that night and was broadcast live on Fuse TV. I was fortunate enough to be there for the rehearsals and the event. It was amazing to see my employers inducted and to be a part of the show, but to me, being able to watch and listen to Jeff that close was one of the highlights of my career. If any guitar player besides Hendrix ever deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, it would be Jeff Beck. And now it’s official.

But we already knew that.

mastering the 20 minute mile

January 12, 2009 in Poetry | Comments

1/12/09

Learning the detail of the suburban winter
Zipped up steps start slow and stooped
The crime scene, deflated corpses of holiday saints on the lawn,
Waiting for a breath of hot air to revive them, early resurrection

Each squirrel runs a confused fast track
The local paper’s attempt at survival
Creates plastic covered headline only obstacles
For the giants tails to avoid

Micro dogs complain and wag
Usually in non-matching pairs
Along the fence, upon the trampoline, over the hedgerow
Their sonic injection ends as I pass the property line

They warned that things could be more beautiful
And that my boat could also go adrift
The emotion of having yourself lay open
Just as serious as the metaphorical version

Bare trees creak and bend
The spread of the leafless branches look arterial
I look for blockages and heartbeats
And pull the fabric from my itching chest

Left or right, how long will I go,
The sidewalk ends, the alleys merge
The road closed for the new railway
The walk detoured, not ended, not now

The dreadful new homes of a branded renaissance
Dropped on the old neighborhoods like stage weights
The wager of a turning tide in three different kinds of krick
The shotgun shack seems homey and real

Riding a wave of gratitude and frustration
Still young and strong but knocked about
Learning to live with things in God’s time
As the impatience of mine got me here.

The cold air arouses, the sweat crosses my back
Like a superstitious athlete approaching the mound
I turn and return, the limited menu
Mastering the 20 minute mile.

Life in the Slow Lane

December 18, 2008 in Life | Comments

Still Life 1 by you.

I’m not really sure if or why I want to write about my current recovery here. Perhaps as a way to update my friends and followers or maybe to help inform people about the process, either as a deterrent for bad habits or as positive motivation for others having to keep moving forward. A good deal of the warnings for bypass patients are split between sternal precautions (”don’t do this or you’ll look like a well-wacked piñata…”) and the emotional warnings (”you may feel depressed, cry without provocation or understand Journey lyrics for the very first time…”).

A great deal of my focus is on not overdoing it with lifting, bending, reaching, pulling, pushing, the petting of cats, dressing and the most frustrating, the opening of my Italian Moka-style coffee pot, which in true King Arthur/Excalibur fashion I offer to anyone who comes to the door to save me from the current percolated existence I am living. No one is the chosen one, yet. Thinking of calling strangers from the local gym, even steroid users.

I saw my surgeon for a follow up yesterday, the one stitch by my chest tube incision was removed and another stapled pile of papers was handed to me with more warnings and suggestions. Driving is out for a few more weeks. The 10 pound lifting limit is nearly 3 months and today it makes sense because I can feel what heavier things do to my chest clearly. I don’t want to threaten my healing in any way but the feeling of being totally unable to do those guy things (unload the groceries, shlep the Christmas tubs, cat wrangling) really does add to the bummer factor.

The real wildcard is the energy factor. You can wake feeling rested and in fact, better than you have in years with the exception of this post Alien chest binding. You begin to attack the day, doing light chores, going for walks, getting rid of a years clutter from your office and then you realize that your gas tank only holds ounces, not gallons at this point. You can push it but will pay in the end, often for a few days. I am doing my best to build my endurance back, in the short term with my goal of being able to do my job at the Super Bowl (more likely pointing a lot than lifting at all) and long term with better heart heath in general. I am looking at beginning actual cardio rehab next week to help me with my goal.

Well, I have to take on the physical side of my day right now (misty cold walk through the neighborhood) followed by the heavily enforced sissy nap (well, I won’t fight too hard). I’m gonna try to write more as I have no work based excuse and the more engaged I am here, the less isolated/negative I have a chance to to be (in theory). I need the outlet as the cats rarely laugh at my jokes.

How to respond to a wake up call, take 1

December 12, 2008 in Life, Road | Comments

Red Maple Heron 2 by you.

Hi everybody,

Been procrastinating about writing this post for some reason. Maybe I was waiting for some insight or witty tag line to help me tie it all together. I have been running hard now for a little over 17 months or, if you want to be technical, maybe a while longer than that. My experience this fall working for Metallica was one of the highlights of my career and a great way to wrap up a good year of touring in a bad economic time.

I have spent most of my work life touring, usually taking care of the band or sidemen but very rarely the guy or gal down front. It’s a different kind of pressure. If you screw something up, the show often comes off the rails; no place to run no place to hide. I often catch myself playing “under speed”, a term used by pool players when you don’t play as good as you can to sucker in a mark and build up his confidence. Not wanting to take on the challenge or attention, I guess I have stuck to the shadows.

When I contacted my friend Arthur about working this fall, I wasn’t even sure which position I was looking at. I just wanted to work with my friend again and having learned that it was a temp job filling in for someone who had the job for years, I figured I could pull it off one way or the other.

It turned out to be taking care of guitars for James, the singer. I had inadvertently taken on a pretty good sized challenge. My fear was replaced by a drive to prep as much as possible and find a way to stay relaxed, believing in myself. Thanks to the crew, Chad (the guy I was filling in for) and James, I learned the set up and the songs. I tried to make my mistakes when it didn’t count and just focus on the details I needed to make his show smooth. I think my most valuable asset  was that he was very clear in what he needed and what he wanted from me. You would be surprised how much of the difficulty of my job is either a lack of communication from a client or their belief in my ESP abilities. A relationship is a relationship and being clear without punishing the other is a really good way to get what you need.

Coffins Down by you.

The Metallica touring machine has a reputation as a steam rolling force of nature with a large show that can move fast, often with multiple systems and across continents. A number of well known production managers have held the job and the team has great pride in their ability to attack tough gigs and get it set up in time, safe and sound. There is always infighting between departments and individuals but it’s been a long time since I’ve been around such a team. Very refreshing.

My part of the tour turned out to be 14 shows, a casual few legs as the band decided to work one week on, one week off as a way to not get separated from their families and their sanity. It is a civilized way to go out and work hard and then recover. The show runs around 2 hours, filled with lasers, fire and riffs of doom. It requires a great deal of focus, especially as the backline guys all do some form of effects switching, actually having to hit the button at just the right time for different sounds as they run across the stage.

I returned from New Orleans for the Thanksgiving break, a little down as I was not going back and still struggling with a lingering cough and cold I had been fighting for weeks. I spent a great deal of the holiday week in bed. Last Sunday around lunchtime I felt like I was having integestion and it came back at breakfast on Monday. Concerned I went to a cardiologist on Tuesday and found that I had arterial blockages bad enough for a double bypass. One was about 70% blocked and the other front side one close to 100%.  I was admitted and scheduled for a  “Cabbage” (Corinary Artery Bypass Graft) on Thursday.

The procedure went really well and I got out of ICU Saturday morning 6am all tubes and lines pulled by noon Saturday. My progress has been helped by my age and being in relatively good shape. I have been up walking and doing breathing exercises since Friday and after getting cleaned up Saturday night I woke up Sunday morning saying “I feel good this morning” which I probably have not said in 20 years.

I was released Monday afternoon,  3 and a half days after double bypass surgery. It is truly amazing.

A few challenges exist as I try to regain my breathing volume and deal with the coughs that are part of the healing process which clear the cack out of my chest and require me to carry a pillow around to wrap against my chest to protect my cool new scar and keep the pain from knocking me over. In all, my discomfort has been minimal, some antinflammitories and 2 small pain pills a day have been doing the trick. For a roadie to be home for 6-12 weeks and be limited to lifting no more than 10 lbs. is looking like the hard part; patience is a new focus. The rehab of my breastbone and chest muscles as well as the new lifestyle I’ll need to lead will be the new focus.

The love and support of all my friends and family have made it easy so far. I feel blessed and truly lucky to have discovered this problem which in reality is mainly a hereditary one with midnight bus pizza thrown on top…. and a long stint of getting away from exercise.  I hope all my friends go see the doctor after hearing my story and go for a walk.

As with most of my days since I’ve been home, I start out filled with energy and promise and then the reality of my situation is I am a bit winded and tired. I’ll keep getting stronger.

You’re stuck with me for a while longer.

Appeal for NRBQ’s Steve Ferguson

October 19, 2008 in Music, appeal | Comments

Steve Ferguson

passed onto me by Dave Marsh, Rock and Roll Confidential…

“Steve Ferguson was the original guitar player with NRBQ (yup, before Big Al Anderson), was involved in Johnnie Johnson’s great album Johnnie B. Bad and has made great music for many years…

From Tom Staley (NRBQ’s Original drummer):

Dave Marsh recommended I contact you to get the word out about Steve Ferguson.
I created a donations page at www.stevefergusonfund.com
and I’m organizing a benefit here in Tampa at Skippers Smoke House.
I understand Terry is bringing his new band to Louisville for a benefit soon.

He is undergoing treatment(chemo and radiation) and is responding positively but it is really just buying him some time as it is bone cancer and has spread into his lymph nodes.
He just started the treatment 2 to 3 weeks ago and remains resigned but upbeat
about it all.

Donations are what is needed as he has a family and the medical bills
are going to be huge.”

Help if you can. Give back what he’s given to us…

PS- if you want to hear some live vintage Ferguson-era NRBQ go to Amazon and download Ludlow Garage…