PopWars

Olga took the afternoon off to help Doug Rice prepare for the opening of his funky new performance space, MuCCC. She called from the place, an old Baptist church, to make sure we were coming. We were still working and hadn’t thought about the evening yet. Then John Gilmore called and wondered what was up so we made plans to go to the opening with him. When John got here he found us out in the road helping our neighbor with his garden tractor. First time out this year and he had two flat tires.

John needed batteries for his new camera so first stop was Walgreens. Peggi and I stayed in the car and switched the radio station. Jamie’s Crying came on and we cranked it. All may not be right with the world but Van Halen still sounds good.

We stopped at a light and an egg yolk yellow Hummer was facing us. I know they’re hogs and all that but they are one cool lookin’, bad ass, military grade auto.

We passed the Playground Tavern and  Simple Truth Ministries and it occured to me that everything is all right with the world from the back seat of John Gilmore’s car.

Some pretty good sized pieces of wood landed on our porch this morning and woke us up. It’s warm but it seemed too windy to walk in the woods without helmets so we stayed on the street. Peggi had the foresight to bring two plastic bags and we filled them both., one with deposit returns (mostly Budweiser products) and the other with plastic recyclables (mostly flask sized vodka bottles).

Rich Stim wrote that he liked it when I discussed my technical problems so here goes. I have two subtle spots on every picture I take with my Nikon P5100. A friend, Corrine, has 5100 too and she just had her lens replaced to correct the same problem. Mine is still under warranty but I am trying to decide whether the spots are bad enough to have to live without the camera for three weeks. The last camera I had was a Sony DSC V1 and it started eating my cards so that is sitting by the door on the way to the trash. Before that I had a Kodak 4800 and I was going to put that on eBay but it is probably worthless now. I was trying to determine if I could use it for the three weeks of downtime so I opened the first photo we took with it back in 2000 (above). It does have a 2×3 aspect ratio and I dig that.

Last week we recorded our Margaret Explosion gig with three new recorders that Bob Martin borrowed from Sound Source. They were a Korg MR1, a Tascam DR1 and a Tascam DR7. The Korg had some amazing stereo imaging but the DR1 sounded the most natural and the best to us. They all have built in mics and run on batteries. Tonight we are checking out a Zoom H-4N that Bob has picked up from the House of Guitars. It has a built in stereo mic and two mic inputs with phantom power so it records four tracks. Sounds amazing on paper.

Norman Rockwell painting

When I was growing up there was nothing but Catholics in my family but then my parents jumped ship and switched us to public schools and we really took advantage of the freedom. There were six of us before my youngest sister came along and I remember the thrill of entertaining “pagan” names for her. “Amy” won out and there was certainly no Saint Amy then. There may be now that the last pope named more saints than all others combined.

Two of my cousins became nuns, my aunt became a Jehovah’s Witness, Amy married into a Jewish family, Peggi’s sister did too and one of my brothers converted to Judaism. His oldest son had his bar mitzvah a few years ago. His youngest, shown in the middle above becomes a bar mitzvah tomorrow. This happens automatically upon turning 13 years old. No ceremony is needed but since the 15th century it became customary to mark the occasion by whooping it up. Further adventures into the melting pot have me playing my djembe behind Hebrew chanting at the Temple.