More podcast episodes, for her pleasure

Lately I haven't been blogging much, instead I've been podcasting. You can find my podcast from my website. I've podcasted some live recordings from the Mussel Inn and a live video from Happy - these shows were part of my mini-tour of New Zealand in April, 2008. Songs podcasted so far are Greyhound Through the Rockies and The Romance of Kaslo.

In addition to live tracks, you'll find a poster for the mini-tour, and I may also be podcasting some photos from the gig in the near future. Yes, you can podcast posters and photos. But maybe I won't podcast the photos, maybe I'll find some other, more webulous way of bringing said photos to you. Perhaps I'll just put them up at Myspace and Facebook. All these known and unknown options make me sleepy.

I may podcast some more live tracks from these shows, so please subscribe to my podcast if that's what you're into. And if you like my podcast, please share it with your friends. I'd like that. Obviously.

By the way, there's another song I podcasted called Summer Grace. It has nothing to do with the New Zealand tour. It has everything to do with stealing fruit. Dig it.

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The world is an amusement park

I was on my way to the music store today, where I had a quick, introductory listen to Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and I spotted the following:

1. A man wearing a tee shirt saying "New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico". In "regular" Mexico's defense, I miss your sandy courtyards and chicken barbeques in half-barrels at roadside.
   
2. A lady busking with a 3-or-4-foot-tall harp outside in a mall courtyard. There were no jesters nearby, but I thought of joining as a bard.
   
3. A Maori fella preaching from a bible to an indifferent, bus stop audience. He kept peaking at the bible for lines, then refocusing his gaze to the bus-waiters and continuing on as if the words were his own. I wondered if his gentle accent contributed to the endearing quality of his sermon?
   

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0.01 "horse power" insufficient in high winds

You know you're going to have a great day when you are cycling to work in the morning, and you have to pedal just as hard downhill as you did climbing uphill.

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Cigarette gold

I saw an un-smoked cigarette on the ground and nearly picked it up. I don't smoke, but many people do, and people are always asking for them from friends and strangers alike. They're expensive to purchase - they're valuable. Perhaps someone dropped this one and, later realizing it, felt a loss... like the loss of a dollar.

I imagined if it was a dollar, then I would pick it up. But imagine if cigarettes were acceptable for trade... I think I'd charge 20 cigarettes for a copy of my CD, knowing that I could trade those for two meals. I could get a good shish taouk for 12 cigarettes, or fish and chips for 6, or a burger and fries for 10. Thick milkshakes are 5 or 6 cigarettes, depending upon the quality of the ice cream in them. A cheap beer might be 3 or 4 cigarettes, and then a lot of people might smoke 3 or 4 cigarettes while drinking a cheap beer.

The bank would have to reserve and store cigarettes and issue notes that were legally "backed" by cigarettes - that way we could pay rent and make major purchases without moving boxes of cartons of cigarettes. A new Subaru WRX Wagon might cost 100,000 cigarettes (probably more)! Eventually the banks would commence fractional reserve banking, and only a portion of our cigarettes would actually exist at the bank. Perhaps the missing cigarettes would have been smoked by wealthy bank owners and aristocrats.

Eventually the bank-issued notes would become legal tender (no longer backed by cigarettes) and commonly accepted for trade, instead of cigarettes. Cigarettes would become rare and coveted, and the majority of the world's cigarettes would be in the hands of the wealthy. People would be disgruntled, feeling tricked out of their wealth of cigarettes. People would pass by banks and wonder where all the cigarettes in the world are truly residing.

Cigarettes would still be traded on the global stock exchanges as a commodity. Investors and brokers would trade bank-issued notes for bond documents that prove ownership of a specified amount of cigarettes. When the market was good, people might sell their stock of cigarettes (for bank-issued notes). Ultimately, nobody would actually see the cigarettes.

Anyways... I wonder if anybody after me picked up that cigarette?

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Podcast: Welly Wonky

This is a slide guitar instrumental that I wrote in late 2006 after arriving in Wellington, New Zealand. It came out (of me, if one can say such a thing about a song) around the same time that I began writing Silent. The recording is from Access Radio - we were recording a radio show in August 2007. It's a rough one-take, but it does the trick for my podcast!

• download mp3
  

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Podcast: Down Again

This song is proof that you can start a song idea and return to it years later - it remained strong in my mind for a long time. I had started with the guitar rhythm and melody line, the first verse, and a chorus that I didn't care for. One night, a couple months ago, I felt inclined to finish it; new verse, new choruses (or is it chori?), and overall cohesion.

Imagine, if you will, some streets-of-Italy-style mandolin and accordion in this song (especially the instrumental break)...

• download mp3
  

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Dear Steven and George

0h boy oh boy please oh please oh please Steven Spielberg and George Lucas when you make Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull can you please make it super old school awesome like the old days with the old movies it will be so great if you do i will love you long time oh boy oh boy please oh please can you keep the computer generated graphics to a minimum or maybe even none nil nada because you know how you used to do it at ILM it was so cool you made models and special sets and with special lighting and it was real movie making and it had just the right amount of cheese and i love cheese especially aged crotonese and Indiana Jones oh boy oh boy i soooo look forward to viewing your movie the much anticipated sequel in the revered series while seated up close to a big screen just like when i was a kid pressed up to the screen in The Last Crusade oh yes i will be in the movie theater as soon as i can get there don't you worry and maybe you can do that trick again with the paramount logo in the first epic film where it morphs into the actual mountain that was cool thanks oh and Harrison Ford if i was a lady of taste and distinction i would fling myself at you

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Christmas sours summer Down Under

Ah, summer... a time of kicking back, relaxing, barbeques, outdoor adventures, extended hours of beautiful daylight, swimming, camping, road trips, and general fun, and... Christmas?!?!

Christmas - a time of hustle and bustle, with people mashed together like potatoes in the big consumer pot, shopping and shopping and shopping to mangled festive music seeping out of store stereo systems. The pressure builds, anxiety flares, frustration lashes out.... until the big day pops... and then everyone shuts down for a week.

I have realized that living in the northern hemisphere has an advantage over living in the southern hemisphere. In the south, the Christmas epidemic runs rampant at the brink of summer, diminishing it (summer) for two weeks or more. In the north, Christmas occurs at the brink of winter, when the sun barely graces the land with its glamorous rays, and in no way affects our precious summer!

Christmas was meant to be in the winter. Sleigh rides loop through moon or star-lit snow and return to warm winter fires. Ovens floweth-over with baked goodies and hams and turkeys, warming homes and appetites. Santa Claus, who lives in the North Pole (where there is lots of snow) has a sleigh, and sleighs are meant to run in snow.

The other day I was baking some Christmas cookies in a friend's kitchen; it got so hot that when I was done I went outside to cool of and let the summer breeze and sunshine dry my shirt. It was weird.

I'm probably being an ignoramus... I just got off the phone with a Kiwi who says he knows it no other way - this is how Christmas is and should be. He doesn't "buy" the whole "snow and sleigh-bells deal" that the north propagates. Christmas, to him, is warm, long sunny days with barbeques... however, I did coerce him to agree that the north gets summer, *plus* a Christmas festive season - the south has the two lumped unfairly together.

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CD Review: Seventeen Oh-Two Oh-Six

This review of Seventeen Oh-Two Oh-Six is quite old now, but I neglected to acknowledge it on my site... so here it is. It's from LucidForge.com, a web-based arts review.

• click here for review
  

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