02009-06-26 | Uncategorized
Last night’s performance went well and I had a great time. The slide show might need fine-tuning, but it is working. The audience enjoyed the combination of guitar-playing, the visual imagery and the Q & A. I think it is a pretty original concept and it keeps getting better. I could not see the screens which are in the corners of the room, but Jon said there was plenty of nice synchronicity happening between the music and the visuals… ah, the brain always wants to make sense of things, find an order to things… so predictable and wonderful. I feel relieved, because it’s a totally new slide show and I am using a different program (((Apple’s Keynote instead of Adobe Lightroom))), but it is working well and, I think, creates a nice step forward.
Did not enjoy Caffe Greco on Columbus yesterday morning, so when Jon suggested a new place he found near the hotel I was ready. It’s called Blue Bottle and here is the page for the cafe, which is near the old mint just SoMa – South of Market. After a cappuccino we also had to try the siphon coffee – see this explanation I found on the interwebs. Very nice. And a nice show, something of a tea ceremony, but with coffee. Perhaps more chem lab than bamboo hut, but highly recommended.
Link to New York Times slideshow about this siphon bar. Blue Bottle sells a set up for $140, but amazon seems to have a similar siphon pot for about $50. And Matt, you can find lab coats here. You should be able to get the whole enchilada, siphon pot plus lab coat for around a hundred bucks. Hm, maybe you should also consider lab glasses to safeguard your eyes? Please do send a photo!!
02009-05-02 | Photos
Morning coffee (“Eye-Opener”, “Shot-in-the-Dark”, “Red-Eye”) in Buffalo. Took these two photos with my iPhone on the walk back to the hotel.
02009-04-09 | Photos
Breakfast at CC. Ordered a Vietnamese coffee. They gave me a cappuccino with a little sweetened condensed milk added. I told the person behind the counter that it wasn’t like any Vietnamese coffee I had ever had. Vietnamese coffee is usually served iced and is a feast for the senses. It is a ritual, as the coffee is coarsely ground, then individually brewed with a small metal Vietnamese drip filter, into a cup containing condensed milk. The condensed milk and coffee are stirred together and poured over ice. There is a certain scent when drops of coffee hit the condensed milk and of course a big flavor…
I must have looked upset, because the person came by our table and offered to take back the coffee. I gladly exchanged it for a regular cup of joe. What was really funny, was that I was told the owner of the restaurant was proud of his Vietnamese coffee…
Jon suggested a new name: Viet-no-mese Coffee
Uploaded some photos I took of Stevo in Palm Desert. Here is a link to the Slideshow on Flickr
I spent most of the evening in the laboratory, the result of which you can hear tomorrow…
02009-03-28 | Uncategorized
Our first performance together went well. Jon was happy and declared the band 80% perfect. After being disappointed by the sound on stage during soundcheck – the guitars sounded extremely tinny (((thin, bright))) – filling the theater with bodies for the performance provided the solution, and it sounded very nice. There were a few missed cues, but it was evident that the band-members were listening, and we had some genuinely beautiful moments.
After the concert a meet & greet in the green room.
Woke up in Torrence. Left the bus at 08:00 looking for a cafe. Ended up walking five miles. Met only one other pedestrian, a man carrying a pink umbrella against the sun. We smiled and nodded heads. So many unused sidewalks in Southern California! I wondered whether it would be smart to transform those sidewalks into mixed use for pedestrians and bicyclists. It seems to me that bikes generally play better with pedestrians that cars play with bikes. Since hardly anybody walks on these sidewalks anyway, one might as well make cycling safer. Google led me to a Starbucks inside a Target, then to a cafe that turned out to be a Mexican restaurant and was closed, and at last to another Starbucks. Returned to the bus a little before 11:00, just as it was getting rather warm outside.
By the way, make sure you download the music you want – check the Music Category for all downloads – in the next few days, because the links for downloading the March offerings will expire during the first week of April. There will be new download-offerings for April, of course, and you can still listen to the embedded tracks (((the embedded tracks are of lower quality than the downloads))), but the links to the downloads will no longer work.
02008-11-24 | Touring, Travel
Enjoyed the coffee at Caffè Nero, not far from the hotel, but at Fernandez & Wells on Lexington Street the coffee was really excellent, especially the “Stumpy”!!
Showed up at the club at 15:00 sharp as noted in our tourbook (((the book of lies!!!))), but the doors were locked, the place was dark and nobody answered the doorbell. Called the contact number we had, but there was only an answering machine. Called our manager, who called my U.S. agent, who called my European agent. No news by 16:15. Not worried, because it will only take us 30 minutes to set up the sound, and since they don’t have a vid projector we won’t need time to set that up, but inconvenient as it is a nice afternoon and one would have enjoyed walking about. Walked back to the hotel, which was conveniently down the street.
At 16:45 the doors were still locked. London completely dark by now.
Finally got in around 18:00. Nice club and good food. Enjoyed playing guitar for the audience… it’s how most of my music is born anyway: just me and my guitar in a room. Even nicer when it’s a room full of people.
Sneaked out through the back entrance of the Pigalle right after the show and started packing, but could not fall asleep until after midnight. At 04:30 we left for the airport still dead tired.
Didn’t buy coffee at Heathrow, because we hoped to sleep on the plane. I guess that worked, sort of… lots of micro-sleep.
The German tour manager picked us up and drove us to Freiburg.
