02024-02-16 | Touring
Wednesday night we performed at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. It was the first performance of this tour and, like every first show after a few weeks off, it had some of that glowing and raw quality that comes from trying to remember all of the arrangements, especially new ones. The first performance is a little bit on edge but also full of new ideas, a delicious tentative freshness. We played Duende del Amor for the first time in years. We had a new section for dreamy afternoon that changed the time signature for a break. We also did a medley of Dancing Alone and Uma Dança. We played Arabesk, from Rain Poems, during soundcheck but decided to delay the first performance of that piece. After soundcheck I heard Robby humming the melody from Arabesk, always a good sign. :-)
33 years ago we performed at the Coach House for the first time. The venue opened in 1980 and was already legendary when we arrived in 1991. Hundreds, maybe even around a thousand signed photos line the walls. Everybody has played on that stage. The website mentions B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Isaak, Tori Amos, Tom Jones and the Black Crowes by name but there are so many more. Ray Charles, Chick Corea, Joe Walsh… the list is endless. I walked along the walls and looked at the framed 8×10 publicity photos showing performers. Most of the artists are still living, others have already passed. It was like wandering through a museum. In a few years the venue will be fifty years old.
Thursday night we played at Belly Up in Solana Beach. We performed Arabesk for the first time. We play this piece faster than the recorded version, upbeat and catchy.
02024-02-07 | Uncategorized
What do love and hate matter
when I’m here alone,
listening to the sound of the rain
late in this autumn evening.
–Dogen, from The Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace by Steven Heine
Another layer of this poem is what is meant by the words I’m here alone. If there is no separation between self and universe he is alone with everything. To hate anything means to hate oneself. To love something…. the same.
02024-02-06 | Uncategorized
Found here.
02024-02-05 | Uncategorized
I will pick up the covers today. Since everything fits together the way I intended I ordered fresh CD media and more envelopes. On Tuesday I will burn a CD and then I will try to play it in every CD player I own and a few I don’t, to make sure the CD works in the widest variety of players. I have a few days before the start of the California tour and should be able to burn a bunch of the CDs before I leave.
Edition of 100. Each CD burned by me, signed and numbered. Offered for sale to Backstage members at $54, which is the price of a CD from the 1980s adjusted for inflation. Anyone who isn’t a Backstage members can buy the CD for the price of $108. Shipping is a flat $20. The album can be purchased on Bandcamp on March 1st. First come first serve. When they are gone they are gone.
02024-02-03 | Uncategorized
Want to sell a book or release an album? Better start a TikTok. – Vox
The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from nine-to-five middle managers to astronauts to house cleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand.
For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.
and
Corporate consolidation and streaming services have depleted artists’ traditional sources of revenue and decimated cultural industries. While Big Tech sites like Spotify claim they’re “democratizing” culture, they instead demand artists engage in double the labor to make a fraction of what they would have made under the old model. That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — now have to be entrepreneurs, too.
I added the emphasis.
It’s the industrial revolution all over again, perhaps, only with carpal tunnel and screen addiction instead of black lungs.
