Create every day

Laura Escudé talks about the importance of creating new music every day, even if it’s only for five or ten minutes (doesn’t matter if it’s “good” or “bad”). I’ve done this for some pretty good stretches in the past; time to start up this habit again. Laura also says, “I perform half-finished songs all the time, because it helps me come up with ideas.” You’re less likely to do that if you’re overly concerned with your creations being perfectly polished jewels.

Solitude Deprivation

Reading Cal Newport’s excellent (and recommended) Digital Minimalism. He coins the term “Solitude Deprivation”: “A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.” Our current “obsession with connection” (connection having always been marketed as a benefit) yields widespread Solitude Deprivation — especially among young people born between 1995 and 2012. Many members of the “iGeneration” “have lost the ability to process and make sense of their emotions, or to reflect on who they are and what really matters, or to build strong relationships, or even to just allow their brains time to power down their critical social circuits, which are not meant to be used constantly, and to redirect that energy to other important cognitive housekeeping tasks. We shouldn’t be surprised that these absences lead to malfunctions.”

Big Ears Festival 2019

Big Ears Thursday evening: Welcome to Knoxville! Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan at the Standard were superb. I’ve wanted to see Bill for a long time, and getting to stand three feet in front of him and watch his fingers was mesmerizing. Since they play so quietly the sound was excellent. Can’t say the same for Mercury Rev at the Mill & Mine. The music would’ve been nice, but it was overpowered by a booming cloud of muddy bass guitar colliding with oh-so typical howitzer-level body-assaulting kick drum. Obnoxious “rock” drum sound in general. Do sound guys go to asshole school to learn this technique? I’ve seen so many concerts ruined by this kind of drum mix… On the other hand, I loved the Mathias Eick Quintet at the Standard — Norwegian jazz (piano, bass, drums, violin, trumpet) — inventive, dynamic, and soulful — and played at a very comfortable … Read more

Big Ears 2019 Thursday

Big Ears trip day one: We stayed at a delightful Air BnB in McGaheysville VA, and in the morning went around the corner to the Thunderbird Cafe — best french toast ever (big puffy donut-flavored slices). Crispy spicy home fries drenched in maple syrup. We’re in the south now, so of course Valerie had a biscuit (and strawberry jam) with her omelette. Picked up grilled cheese sandwiches at Pop’s (grilled cheese their specialty) in Roanoke for the ride to Knoxville.

Feature creep

From Paul Jarvis: “Lately it seems like there are very few technology features I think are good ideas. Too frequently new “features” are touted as tools we can use, when more often than not they become annoyances we allow into our lives.”

Delirious desire

It’s easy to understand why we remember songs when we’ve heard them dozens or hundreds of times. But there are also songs that seize a permanent spot in our memory despite being heard only, say, four or five times. For me, one of those songs is “Say You” by Ronnie Dove. It barely cracked the Top 40 in late September 1964. It was the last track on the B-side of Ronnie’s Right or Wrong LP — kind of a weird position for a single… The follow-up single, a cover of Wanda Jackson’s great “Right or Wrong,” and a bigger hit, was the last track on side A. (Incidentally, Wanda’s song is another of those I heard only a handful of times back in the day, but never, ever forgot — like “Say You,” it’s one of my favorites.) “Say You” is a great-sounding Nashville record (maybe recorded at Studio B, … Read more

Silence

I know one thing for certain: silence will not present itself unbidden amid the noise of the world. If I want it, I have to make space for it, and there is always a choice to make that space. … And in our time now, every decision in favor of silence is profound, even if it involves no more than deliberately turning away other things for hours or days in a week.
Jane Brox

Chamath Palihapitiya

The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.
Former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “Mary Mary” (1966)

For aspiring musicians in the 1960s, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was hugely influential. If Bob Dylan turned rock into “music for adults” on a lyrical level, the Butterfield Band did the same thing musically. The band had a ferocious, street-tough sound, best heard early on in What’s Shakin’ cuts like “One More Mile” and “Good Morning Little School Girl.” The performances on their first full (eponomously-titled) Elektra album were great, but despite the instruction on the back of the jacket to play it loud*, the sound itself, the production, was a tiny bit distant, as if you were standing at the back of the club. What’s Shakin’ put you right at the front edge of the stage. (I don’t think Butterfield achieved that degree of in-your-face toughness again until 1969’s Keep On Movin’, produced by Jerry Ragovoy.) The first album was straight blues, pure Chicago. Sam Lay was probably … Read more

Santana on Szabo

Carlos Santana says that, for him, Gabor Szabo was the “exit out” from the “BB King freeway.”