02007-07-17 | Uncategorized
I am in Milan after 2days of flights: albuquerque – st.louis – nyc – milan… the TWA flight from kennedy airport in new york 2 milan is delayed by 1 1/2 hours…
the flight manager doesn’t want 2 let me bring my guitar onboard: no space in the overhead bins!! i say, i can put it in a closet, but she replies that that is illegal… i reply, that i do it all the time… she says, it’s always illegal… i say, i CANNOT let her have the guitar… i walk 2 the upper deck… she says she will check on me… ah, but the flight attendent on the upper deck likes flamenco + stores the guitar in the little closet… ‘don’t tell the flight manager’, he says… i won’t, i reply… i sit down + pray that the flight manager will 4get all about me…
there are only 2 other people on the upper deck, an american couple flying 2 a wedding in italy… an announcement: we won’t have a lot of cabin space 4 luggage, since TWA purchased this aircraft used from Air France + it hasn’t been changed 2 the specifications of TWA yet… more delay… maybe the pilots cannot read the french manuals 4 the 747 we joke… well, this plane doesn’t even have video, we are told… i point out the overhead video projector… oh, but that never worked… hm, aha, but the engines are supposed 2 work? more delay… a stewardess says, that we will leave soon… i ask, how she knows this + she answers, that the pilots are now pushing a lot of buttons… the steward shows us the safety instructions, but warns us that he hasn’t actually gone through them in a long time, ’cause all other planes show safety instruction videos… now i’m 29,000 feet above the ground in this old 747, formerly owned by Air France + i’m helping the stewardess translate the temperature readings of the stove, which are in centigrade… the next morning i arrive @ the hotel in milan, turn on CNN + find out that flight #800, which couldn’t have left JFK airport more than 5 or 10 minutes b4 or after our flight, had exploded in midair… what a feeling… i saw some of those people waiting in the terminal!!!
I call my friends in the USA. Some of them only knew that I was flying to Italy, and worried that I might have been on Flight 800…
02007-07-16 | Uncategorized
75-year-old has world’s fastest private internet connection – Newlaunches.com
Ma Löthberg’s house was converted into a broadband dog-and-pony act in an effort to promote high-speed fibre connections as a commercially viable platform. With such a connection she can download a DVD in 0.14 seconds and a HD-DVD in 3 seconds.
02007-07-15 | Photos, Santa Fe
Love that Nokia N95! Check out the color and resolution. After dinner at Bumble Bee’s I took a walk down Staab, then Griffin and McKenzie back to Bumble Bee’s.
02007-07-14 | Music, Recording, Santa Fe
Went to Barrett Martin’s to jam on some new musical ideas. Of course we also talked about the state of music and found that we both agree on the future of record labels. The majors will become Media Management Companies and the indies will become Music Curators… New major label contracts all state that the label gets a percentage from all income, meaning CDs and downloads of course, but also merchandise, live concerts and endorsements, commercials etc… so basically an artist pays about 20% of his gross to a manager and another 20% or whatever to the label – well, pretty soon the label and the manager will become one and the same…
Indies on the other hand will flourish if they can establish themselves as great curators (the word is latin and means guardian or overseer) and people keep returning to them for the artists they select and present. Sure you can buy any and all albums on iTunes, but shopping on iTunes is not dissimilar from shopping in a mega-CD store or Walmart. Customers might find that they like the smaller selection a little boutique label makes for them. Take Ubiquity Records for example… well, of course we hope to do the same with SSRI and Fast Horse and the Santa Fe Desert sound… We want to create one web destination for our music and are discussing adding a second tier to the ListeningLounge, the music from Fast Horse Recordings. More about some changes to the LL in a separate post.
In the afternoon I was in my studio, recording guitar for one of the new songs. We performed it live in June (during the second half of the concert) and it ended with a beautiful Stevo solo on electric guitar. The song is an interesting challenge because first it alternates between Tangos and Rumba rhythms and in the second half it alternates between 4/4 and 6/8. There are altogether three different tempi and the challenge is to make the flow organic and not artificial sounding. It has to feel right. Anyway, I was very pleased with my progress, but tore myself away to see a documentary about a music festival in Fez, Morocco at the Cinema Cafe. When I arrived at the theater I somehow managed to slam my right ring-finger in the door of my car. Ouch. I raced home and put peroxide ice on the finger, because the skin had split, followed by an hour in ice. The nail has a small dark spot, but the finger didn’t swell up too much. I don’t think I will lose the nail, but the studio will have to wait a while. Damn, that song was turning out so nicely.
02007-07-14 | Uncategorized
I gave Davo Travertine Spa‘s Shea Butter for his hands, which can get pretty beat up from hitting the drums. He says this is the best stuff he has tried, because it is rich, but not greasy. Exactly how I feel about it. It ain’t cheap, but if you are hard on your hands or just need them to be in great shape, you should buy some. One container can last you months. And partly because I have been nagging him about it, Terry Carter removed all paraben from his list of ingredients. Excellent!
I previously mentioned Travertine Spa’s Shea Butter here and here.
