I have no sympathy for Saddam Hussein. I don’t support the death penalty, but if anyone deserved it he probably did.

But the way this all came down just feels wrong. Juan Cole said it better than anybody else I’ve read. He has an article at Salon, which unfortunately requires you to view a brief commercial before you can access their content. I checked his site, but it only links to the Salon article, though it does also point to other reading.

Here’s the gist of Cole’s article:

The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare.

He does go on to explain exactly how fouled up this whole matter has been, like everything else in Iraq. Cole points out how if Saddam had been tried for any of the thousands of Sunnis he killed, there was a chance this trial could have helped national unity rather being a detriment. But once again, the path to one of the worst possible outcomes was taken. And now Saddam is a martyr for the Sunnis and another wedge between the various Iraqi factions.

I’ll try to have a more cheerful post tomorrow; right now I’m on an iffy internet connection at my gig, hanging around waiting for dinner.

Update: Reactions to the execution from Wolcott, Josh Marshall, Tom Watson. But if you read anything, read this post by Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake. She has worked as both a defense attorney and prosecutor, and her essay is moving and illuminating.

Posted by pat at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s Friday, and time for one of those one-word iTunes searches.

Well, not really. To tell the truth, I’ve had a thing for Frank Zappa’s “Dirty Love” lately, and when I typed “dirty” into the search box I saw an interesting song list:

Dirty Denim / The Donnas / Spend the Night
Dirty Love / Frank Zappa / Overnite Sensation
Dirty Secret / Grant-Lee Phillips / Virginia Creeper
Dirty Eyes (Sex Don’t Sell) / The Raveonettes / Chain Gang of Love
Dirty Water / The Standells / Nuggets Vol. 1: The Hits
Dirty Work / Steely Dan / Can’t Buy a Thrill
Dirty Little Thing / Velvet Revolver / Contraband

I’m not sure what my fascination is with “Dirty Love,” though I do love the fact that it sounds like an eight-foot tall black man is trying to climb out of each speaker. And lines like

Give me
Your dirty love
Like some tacky little pamphlet
In your daddy's bottom drawer

and

I'll ignore your cheap aroma
And your Little Bo Peep diploma
I'll just put you in a coma
With some dirty love

certainly don’t hurt! As for the other songs, click below to go past the fold:

• I’m not a big fan of The Donnas, though I like this song better than most on that album;
• I was majorly into Grant Lee Buffalo, which I think was one of the most under-appreciated bands of the last 10 years. Of Grant-Lee Phillips’ solo albums, I only have Virginia Creeper. It’s much more of an acoustic, laid-back Americana sound, while GLB was definitely a rock band. The point is, it’s so good I kick myself for not listening more (and buying his other albums) every time I hear one of these songs. Wonderful stuff.
• I haven’t quite decided where I stand on the Raveonettes. I think I like the idea (sweet melodies straight out of Buddy Holly or the Everly Brothers over unbelievably distorted guitars) better than the execution most of the time.
• Of course, The Standells’ ode to home town Boston is a classic. And a song I’ve played in bands about a million times.
• As one of the few Steely Dan songs not sung by Donald Fagen, this one is an anomaly. David Palmer has a great voice, and I’ve always liked the world-weary, how-did-I-ever-get-into-this-situation lyrics.
• I’m generally not into hard rock, and especially not into hard rock supergroups, but I have to say Velvet Revolver does it right. Not one of my favorite cuts on the album, but it stands up just fine.

Have a happy New Year, everyone!

Posted by pat at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, duh. I totally forgot the reason I originally started write that post last night. Both my MacBook Pro and the G5 are on a wireless network, with the cable modem and Airport base station down in the basement. When I moved the G5 into the new room and hooked everything up, it couldn't get on the network. It kept acting like I was typing the wrong password or something, giving an error message that “There was a problem joining the network.” I chased the problem for two or three days—it was a big PITA because I use both machines for different things and move files back and forth over the network all the time.

There is a great tutorial on troubleshooting Airport problems at MacFixit, and I tried turning Airport off and on, turning the cable modem off and on, resetting the base station, blah blah blah. Nothing. Finally, I tried “enable interference robustness,” and poof! I was in like Flynn. Apparently this room is some kind of hot spot for wireless signals, even though I’m farther from the wireless phone and the microwave than in the other room. We’ll see if I start glowing in the dark or something as I continue working in here. The MacBook has no problem at all, maybe since it’s a newer machine.

Anyway, if your Mac is having wireless network problems, try the MacFixit page. If you do any kind of tech support for your own or other people’s Macs, I wholeheartedly recommend the MacFixit site. I subscribe to their email list, and never install upgrades or security patches until I see if people are having trouble with them.

Posted by pat at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few random thoughts:

Over the Christmas holiday I moved my office/studio control room out of the living room and into the smaller bedroom. I was sick of seeing visitors confronted with a bunch of black boxes and piles of cables when they walked in the front door, even though pretty much everybody I see is here for a recording session. I wanted a living room again, instead of always being at work.

One advantage of the new room is that it has two windows, while the living room had dark drapes (and I didn’t want to advertise all the expensive equpment inside by opening them). I find myself craving light these days, and I actually look forward to going into the sun-filled room in the mornings. Acoustically, the room has lots of standing waves, causing my speakers to sound harsh, but I have carpet padding and a couple of Skyline diffusors to hang on the walls, which should clear that up.

Meanwhile, I steam-cleaned the living room today; unfortunately that means moving large sofas and such from one side of the room to the other, clean, vacuum, and repeat. I wonder why I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck? Perhaps it is time for a drink.

And maybe some cheese? My brother and sister-in-law were in town yesterday, and they brought a selection of amazing cheeses from the Better Cheddar: English Huntsman (alternating layers of English cheddar and blue cheeses—it’s unbelievable), Spanish Drunken Goat, French aged Comte Gruyere, and Norwegian Gjetost (most people think it’s disgusting, but I got addicted to the stuff while touring over there). And crackers and chocolate. Yum!

I got more 4 Sknns photos from Richard tonight, most of which I had never seen before. Now I have way too much stuff to use, which is a good (and rare) situation to be in for a designer. Now I just have to come up with something. Oh. That.

Finally, speaking of the 4 Sknns (way more than I ever thought I would), one of our live tracks came across on iTunes shuffle play this morning, from a live recording that is not going to be included in the set for sale. Maybe I’ll post one or two of those just for fun.

Thus ends this evening’s random blabberings.

Posted by pat at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because every once in a while, a guy just has to buy himself a new dinosaur.

Posted by pat at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, it’s time to get all music-geeky. I recently bought a software drum machine called iDrum. Why am I bothering you with this? Because it’s so much fun, dammit! As the promotional page for the product says:

Drum machine neophytes will get to experience the same magical 'instant-gratification' fun that hooked an entire generation of musicians on the hardware drum machines of yesteryear. Pros will find that there's simply no faster, easier way to access and manage large unwieldly drum sample libraries, get a phat beat going, and get it exported into the format you need.

It’s true. I’ve got a ton of drum samples recorded by the legendary Bob Clearmountain, as well as a bunch of TR-707 samples (one of the hardware drum machines alluded to), and no easy way to use them without going out and buying a full-blown sampler. iDrum makes it really easy to build custom kits from your own samples. Plus it comes with a nice collection of great sounds already installed.

More to the point, dear reader-who-may-have-had-a-sneaking-urge-to-play-with-music-on-his/her-computer, iDrum is dead easy to use. Check out the video—when the page comes up click on the iDrum Video Tutorial link on the right side of the page, because I can’t link directly to the movie. S’fun!

You can download a 10-day demo for free. If you decide to buy it, though, don’t get it directly from the Izotope site—they want $70 for a download, while I went down to the local MicroCenter and picked up a physical package for $50 (my beloved TR-707 was $250-300 back in the ’80s).

It’s not perfect, of course. For one thing, it only does 4/4 time on its own, though I believe if I set an odd time signature in Pro Tools or GarageBand it will force iDrum to only play part of a pattern before returning to 1. For bar lengths greater than 4 you can do the usual workarounds like halving the tempo and treating 32nds as 16ths and so forth. But I haven’t gotten around to trying this yet.

I’ve become a fan of Izotope products. I downloaded their free Vinyl plugin—now you can make your pristine digital audio sound like it’s coming off a beatup old turntable! And I recently bought their Ozone 64-bit mastering system. I’m looking forward to completing the PhD I will need to actually use that one….

Posted by pat at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by pat at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by pat at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently, when my friend came over to visit Sunday night, he brought some kind of intestinal bug with him. One of the benefits of my hermit-like existence is it’s pretty obvious, when I get sick three days after practically the only time I’m in the same room with another human being, where the germs came from. I guess that’s a benefit.

Anyway, in the course of trying to entertain myself this afternoon, I ran into a YouTube clip of one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the Daily Show. Or anyplace. So, here you go.

Posted by pat at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s a nifty little feature about Mac OS X that I recently ran into: You can build a decent slide show almost instantaneously. Simply select the files you want to view and ctrl-click (or right-click if you have a 2-button mouse), then select Slideshow from the menu. It defaults to 3 seconds per slide with a fade-to-black between images, but if you move your mouse you’ll see a controller bar that allows you see an index page with all the images, fit-to-screen option, click for previous/next image, and close. Or you can use the Esc key to close, whether you use the controller bar or not.

Pretty damn slick. Just one more reason to love OS X.

Posted by pat at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t suppose it’s common knowledge—and suspect most people just don’t care—but the 4 Sknns are going to get together for a reunion gig at Blayney’s in Westport Saturday, February 3. We’re kind of going all out on it: we’re putting together a 2-disc CD package to sell, and rumor has it that Larry Brewer of Great Plains TV is working on a DVD package of footage he has. And so on….

Really, the whole point of this post is just for me to put up some pics of the band. Guido sent me a bunch of photos to select from for the CD package, and seeing them just cracks me up. So I had to post a few of them.

These were shot in a tiny storage closet backstage at the old Walrus Inn, 83rd and Wornall; probably around 1984. Yes, I’m sure we were at least as toasted as we look in the photos. And boy, were we skinny.

This one just has to be the CD cover. If you could fit the 4 Sknns experience into one photo, this would be it. Oh, in case you don’t know the band, l to r: Richard Streeter (bass & vocals), Guido Toledo (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Pat Tomek (drums), Gary Charlson (guitar & vocals).

This is the runner-up. At least you can sorta see Guido’s face.

I don’t know who took this shot. As I remember, Joe MacCauley, our sound man, took the first couple pics, but that’s him being held up by the rest of us in this one.

Finally, a poster design I did for a gig in the early ’90s.

So, there you go. All those band pics and not a brick wall in sight. Take that, Rock and Roll Confidential! Come on out to Blayney’s in February. I can’t promise we won’t suck, but it should be an, um, interesting experience.

Posted by pat at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

On the phone:

Elise: Hello?

Me: Whatcha doin’?

Elise: What’s the matter? You don’t sound like yourself.

Me: I wonder who I am, then?

Elise: I don’t know. Is he rich? ’Cause if I’m married to somebody else, he might as well have a lot of money!

I love my wife. No matter what, she can always make me laugh.

Posted by pat at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah, yeah, I know—I have mixed feelings—okay, mostly negative—about holiday music. There are a few songs I like, but most are just so much treacly, sappy mush, like over-cooked macaroni. And then of course there’s all the emotional baggage that anything associated with this time of year has to carry.

But still, some people like holiday music. Especially when it may offer a fresh take on some tunes that you thought had been done to death. It is in that spirit that I offer a link to the Garritan Christmas Music Player. Here is an entire album of holiday music free for the downloading, including cover art, CD label, and liner notes.

The Garritan community is composed of musicians using the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample libraries. You may not be aware of how much orchestral sample libraris have progressed recently—just this morning I was reading of a commercially available library weighing in at over 550 GB, including over 800,000 individual samples. With that kind of heft, it may not be surprising that a single musician can deliver the sound of an entire orchestra with stunning realism and massive presence. Not that just any musician could do that, of course—the people featured on the Garritan Christmas page are way beyond competent. And they are from all over the world, not just Americans and Britons, but people from Iceland and Slovenia, you name it.

Besides this year’s collection, Volume 3, previous collections are also available. I also see there is a MySpace page for the album. It’s not really my cup of tea (my warped childhood, I suppose), but it’s worth a listen just for the amazing sound quality. Every once in a while a section may sound a little bit keyboard-y, but mostly it sounds like the best-recorded orchestra you ever heard. Pretty much took my breath away. And if you’re stuck for a quick gift for somebody, you can’t beat the price of this album.

Posted by pat at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

What a sad week. First the passing of Peter Boyle, and then Ahmet Ertegun.

I never really tried to follow Peter Boyle’s career, but his performances in Young Frankenstein and on Everybody Loves Raymond are more than enough for any one lifetime. Hearing the monster’s voice say “Super Duper” in the dance sequence to “Putting On the Ritz” has made me laugh out loud in every appreciation I’ve heard this week, no matter how shitty a mood I’m in. As for Raymond, I’m not a big fan of traditional sitcoms, but that show had consistently excellent writing and a great cast, and Peter Boyle was a big part of that.

Ahmet Ertegun wasn’t well known outside the music business, but there probably aren’t many who had more to do with shaping what we listen to. Need I say more than to point out the main exhibition hall of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is named after him?

So, why not cheer ourselves up with a little Flash movie about the end of the world? No, really, it’s hilarious. Not work-safe because of language, though. Thanks to Gary P for the link. While you’re there, you might as well check out a very slick animation of Weird Al’s song Albuquerque.

Posted by pat at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head with a post about the way the press is supposed to function in a democracy. Why is it notable when a paper actually does what it’s supposed to do? TV journalism is worse—their idea of a balanced presentation is to put two nutcases on from either end of the spectrum and let them flail at each other. Journalists spend all day immersed in current events, and they are supposed to be a guide to those of us who don’t have time or access. They are not there to tell us what to think, or to repeat wild accusations with a straight face. They are supposed to help us understand what is happening.

As Greenwald says: “All of this is the by-product of the well-documented and much-discussed journalistic myth that ‘objectivity’ requires mindless recitation of both sides's claims, and that it is improper and ‘biased’ to take sides. But as the Times article above documents, objectivity and meaningful journalism often requires taking sides, particularly where one side is making objectively false statements.”

Posted by pat at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A bit of comparison shopping information:

Unable to resist the $1.34 price tag, I found out Target’s generic Benadryl is not very good. It only put me to sleep for about five hours, even though I’ve probably only averaged four hours a night the last week. Apparently you have to go for the real stuff if you want the good sleep.

However, Elise informs me that—if you can make yourself go to Wal-Mart—their generic version of Benadryl is just as good as the real thing.

In other south Kansas City news, the Chick-Fil-A next to the Ward Parkway Target is now open. Much rejoicing was heard throughout the land.

This has been a public service announcement.

Posted by pat at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I guess I ran into this site a while back (because I was already a registered user), but I had forgotten about it until someone mentioned it in a mailing list. It’s very cool.

It’s called Wolfgang’s Vault; the coolest thing about the site is that it has tons of board tapes from the ’60s onward—amazing shows from just about every legendary band you can imagine, at legendary venues like Fillmore West, Winterland, The Bottom Line, and so forth. The last time I was there I heard some great stuff from Led Zeppelin, Sons of Champlin, and a blazing hot set from Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

A board tape, in case you didn’t know, is a line out from the PA mixing board to, in those days, a tape recorder. Because of this, some of the mixes aren’t stellar—if a guitar amp is really loud in the room, it won’t be in the PA very much and will be a bit soft in the recording. But they generally sound excellent and really capture the excitement of the moment. Hours of fun!

The site requires a free registration, just so you know.

Posted by pat at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t often agree with the Cato Institute, but it’s hard to argue with this: Data mining, a.k.a. warrantless surveillance, generates false positives 90% of the time. The “statisical likelihood of false positives is so high that predictive data mining will inevitably waste resources and threaten civil liberties…. Better interagency information sharing, investigatory legwork, in pursuit of genuine leads, and better training are what the 9/11 story most clearly calls for,” but data mining distracts from those goals.

Not to mention it’s illegal.

Posted by pat at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few random links I have been meaning to post lately:

C.W. Nevius blogs “Zune reinforces Microsoft’s dorky image.”

On the opposite side of that fence, Salon’s Farhad Manjoo provides an interesting commentary on the “seemingly uncanny alignment of technology, design, culture, and media” which is the iPod. The piece is actually a review of Stephen Levy’s book, The Perfect Thing. Despite the title, neither the book nor the review posits that all is well in iPodland. Manjoo writes, “If you've spent enough time with the iPod -- over the years, I've had four, and there is a new Shuffle in Shanghai with my name on it -- you must recognize the vague worry of which I speak. The iPod is so good. But I can't be the only one who sometimes wishes it hadn't been invented at all.” I thought it was a really interesting rumination on the extremely personal role of music in our lives; unfortunately you do have to sit through a commercial to see the whole article.

Thanks to Joey for sending this in an email—possibly my favorite lead sentence in a news story ever: An Austrian village called Fucking will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns.

I saw this Flash movie maybe last year and completely forgot about it until a couple nights ago when a friend and I were talking about Jon Stewart’s height, or lack thereof. It’s sort of oddly cool to compare your own body size with that of various celebrities. Well, okay, maybe it’s not.

Stewart, btw, is 5'6". I actually thought he was shorter. Guess I’m just jealous.

Posted by pat at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)