goodbye, marcel
A few thoughts on the passing of Marcel Marceau:
What? You thought I could pass that one up?
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A few thoughts on the passing of Marcel Marceau:
What? You thought I could pass that one up?
I keep wanting to post about this unbelievable morass our country is in—and what happens when we elect some Democrats to clean up the mess? Nothing. Goddamnfucking nothing. They were apparently just waiting for their turn at the feeding trough of Washington politics.
Of course, it’s not all black and white, even after six years of an administration which sees everyone and everything that doesn’t agree 100% with their agenda as Helping The Terrorists, Undermining the Christian Faith of Our Forefathers, Trying to Destroy Our Families, and so forth. Our political discourse has degenerated to nothing more than dueling bumper sticker-sized sound bites, and that does not serve us well in a complex and rapidly changing world.
Take for example, Iraq. No, we should have never have invaded it in the first place, and doing so is arguably the worst foreign policy blunder in US history—but we’re there. And we’re leaving, sometime. Despite the fact that George Bush has successfully kicked that can of worms to his successor, the question remains: how and when do we do it? George Packer dissects our options (bad, worse, and horrendous) in a recent New Yorker article called “Planning For Defeat.” Whether you think that American withdrawal from Iraq will result in flowers and sunshine for everyone or complete victory for the terrorists, or if you would just like to have an idea how the various scenarios might play out, this is anything but bumper-sticker reading.
Meanwhile, Mideast expert Juan Cole demonstrates why the Pentagon’s own statistics show there is little evidence that The Surge has had any significant effect on violence in Iraq. Instead, the President has apparently decided to take LBJ’s Vietnam advice and “declare victory and go home,” since it has been widely known for some time that troop numbers have to return to their pre-Surge levels by next summer; there simply aren’t enough troops to sustain that level any longer. So we’ll have this kabuki theater wherein the generals soberly report that continued progress will allow additional troops to go home, advice which the president will gravely accept while proclaiming Return on Success. Or whatever the bumper sticker phrase of the moment happens to be.
Incidentally, Keith Olberman has some choice words for the president over his unprecedented decision to use a military officer to advance his political goals. But barely an eyebrow is raised in the media or the Congress. In fact, half the Senate Democrats, terrified to be seen as not “supporting the troops,” voted to censure MoveOn.org for simply exercising its free speech rights. Of course, right wing blogs and commentators routinely accuse liberals of treason and even call for their arrest or worse. But apparently that is protected speech.
FWIW, I thought the MoveOn ad was stupid. It strikes me as a first draft headline that was overcome by its own (nonexistent) cleverness, and no one took a step back to think it through. But, whatever. Did they have the right to say it? Absolutely.
On the homefront, an MIT student is “lucky to be alive” because she happened to go to the airport to pick up a friend, wearing a sweatshirt with an electric circuit board (which apparently made letters on the sweatshirt light up in geek-talk about her major at the university), something she had made for career day. Good grief, people, what kind of terrorist wears a bomb on the outside of her clothes? Oh, I forgot, when you go to the airport you’re supposed to give up your civil rights, liquids and gels, and enter full cattle panic mode. I especially like the way authorities referred to the glowing paint on her sweatshirt as “putty,” making it sound more like C4 explosive or something.
I wonder why I’m so frequently depressed these days? Thank god for Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog. Finding it this morning pretty much made my day.
Okay, the film is on its way to Sundance, and I guess we’ll see if it gets accepted, and the singer’s demo is finished once I clear up some mid-bass muddiness on one of the songs…. What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?
I’ve been so busy twirling knobs in the studio the last couple months, I’ve barely had time to blink, not to mention the website work that’s been progressing. I have six projects that I’ve had to work on daily, and the mental gear-shifting has been probably the hardest part. I have a different role in each of them, depending on where we are in the timeline: engineer or producer, drummer, art director, designer, code monkey, marketing person. And I feel less competent at each of those roles all the time, since each is a discipline taking years or decades to master. Oh well. Such is the lot of the independent freelancer. I just kinda suck at everything, instead of allowing my full suckiness to flower in one particular area.
So, anyway, my long-time client Doug Luther hired me to record three of his songs for an independent film project. I know next to nothing about the film, but I’m reasonably happy with the results of the music recording. Thanks to Gary Charlson (guitars), Bob Akers (slide guitar), TJ (keyboards), Stephanie Shelton (bass), and Greg Welch (bass), for their help and ideas. Doug has been a pleasure to work with, as always.
I’m also finishing up a demo for a singer named Kristel Reitz; just a couple of cover songs to send to a small label in Houston who wanted to hear her. It was a chance to record my Issues bandmates Cliff Eveland (guitar) and Richard Streeter (bass), and that was fun.
But this post isn’t all about me—it’s also about what I’ve been reading! But no, I’ve decided this is long enough and that should be a new post. Up shortly.
I was at The Record Bar last night, since for once I don’t have any gigs this weekend. I mention this because a) it’s my blog and I can prattle on about trivial shit if I want to, and b) it gave an interesting “control group” scenario to my usual Friday night.
Saturdays I am always burned out, hard to do anything but laze around (despite the fact that today I have a final mix to upload for the client to evaluate and four more songs to export in multi-track format for another engineer, not to mention housecleaning before a social thing this afternoon), just overall feeling pretty worthless. Last night, I had the same experience as usual—a loud, smoky bar, staying up till almost 3 am—but without moving equipment and beating the hell out of a drumkit for four hours.
It turns out that most of the burnout is just from being in a bar all night. My hands aren’t slightly swollen and my feet don’t feel like someone set upon them with a ball peen hammer, but most of the usual Saturday fryfest is in place. Maybe the physical effort isn’t as much as I thought. Or maybe my body is just in the habit of feeling this way, sort of a muscle memory.
While I’m on the subject, the bands at the Record Bar last night kind of had an ’80s theme. I missed The Bureau, a St. Louis band whose tunes on their MySpace page I liked pretty well, and supposedly they were good. But of course I got there just in time to watch them move their equipment offstage.
Next up was a heavily synth-oriented band, also from St. Louis, called Femme Fatality. I listened to parts of a couple songs on MySpace and they seemed interesting, but live they were not very.
The concept of the band seems to be two guys doing rap-style vocals over sequenced ’80s-style synth pop, backed up with a real band. Which is kind of a cool idea, but in point of fact I was over it after two songs, and increasingly annoyed after about four. There were no dynamics at all—they came on going about 90 miles an hour and left exactly the same.
About 80% of the mix was the sequenced synth parts. It was difficult to hear the vocals at first, but even when they were brought up it didn’t much help. There were no melodies and the vocalists’ rapid fire delivery made it impossible to make out more than the odd phrase here or there. Even between songs it was difficult to understand what was being said, though most of it seemed to be a snarl about how people weren’t getting into the show enough, and something about how they’d forgotten how hard it is to get a reaction in an over-21 bar. Ah, I get it—you’re used to playing to a bunch of high school kids who aren’t actually listening, but just plug into the energy and go wild as long as the beat continues. Sorry, some of us need to hear an actual song to get excited.
I honestly don’t know why they had a band. I could just barely make out how the live drums were slightly fattening up the sound of the sequenced percussion. The drummer obviously hadn’t been playing very long, though she did a reasonable job of keeping with the sequencer (of course, how could she miss?). I never heard a single note out of the other two guys, who played bass, guitars, and keyboards, even though they were playing as hard as they could.
And that’s a big part of what’s wrong with that band—they’re not necessary. All they are doing is doubling parts already covered at earsplitting volume by the sequenced synthesizers. There was no arrangement at all. Nothing was ever cut away to reveal something else underneath. There was absolutely no use of silence, and no sense of the band trying to get the crowd on their side, unless you call haranguing the crowd to get with it an attempt to relate. It also appeared even the amount of time between songs was sequenced. So there would be maybe ten seconds with no music, one of the singers would say something unintelligible, and then we’re off to the races again. Worse, the songs didn’t have endings; they merely stopped. I have never seen such a static, boring, one-dimensional show, which is odd since on the face of it the players were so frantic.
As usual, it’s much more fun to write about a band that sucks than a good one. Roman Numerals closed out the night with a thoroughly professional set. Their material is a bit reminiscent of Joy Division or The Cure or Gang of Four, though they don’t really sound like any of those bands. Special kudos to Ryan (formerly of the Getup Kids) on drums, who was as much fun to watch as to listen to. My only complaint was the PA volume, which was oppressive all night.
I’m not a crotchety old guy (well, maybe I am, but that’s not the point). I like it loud. It needs to be loud. But this was a sonic assault—I had earplugs jammed as far in as they would go, and it was still too fucking loud. The kind of loud where you can’t hear anything except loudness. I would have liked it a lot more if I could have really heard the songs, because they seemed like good songs. Instead all I could really say was, “Damn, that’s loud.”
Oh well, next week I’m back on the giving end instead of receiving, in the loud department.
I just heard yesterday (from Guido, thank you for the call) that Greg Beck died suddenly a few days ago.
Greg used to be a doorman at Blayney’s back when the 4 Sknns played there regularly. I was never close with him, but we would run into each other in Westport every few years and have a pleasant time catching up on things. Greg worked on a FEMA emergency team for some years, and he always had interesting stories to tell about that. The last time I saw him, he was excited at how well his blog was doing—it was one of the most popular in Kansas City.
Like I said, we were never close, but Greg was a genuinely good guy. I’ll always remember how it felt shaking hands with him—I have fairly large hands, but his were like catcher’s mitts. He was a huge guy, with a heart to match. Unfortunately, it appears that heart finally gave out. We’ll miss you, Greg.
Follow the link to Death’s Door for funeral information. There will also be a remembrance for him at The Record Bar tomorrow at 5 pm.