Elsewhere

So, you may know that I’ve had a link to Air’s latest album, Talkie Walkie,
for a while now. Imagine my surprise when we actually got to see them
in person today. No, not at the big concert tonight at the arena, but
in a cozy little radio recording studio in downtown Seattle. Other than
radio station staff, there were only 2 other people in the recording
booth to watch them play. Rock.

Today I visited with Air at KEXP. 42 minutes out of an otherwise normal day… yeah, KEXP Seattle 90.3 was already my favorite radio station, but now, I’m pretty much their bitch.

[PLUG]
You
can listen to KEXP anywhere around the world, 24/7 thru the Internet
(they’re even in iTunes), and I highly recommend it; you won’t find
such an eclectic mix of good, non-commercial music anywhere else. 100%
member-supported, no advertising, except for the occassional DJ
announcement. I often listen at work while I’m coding.
[/PLUG]

But I just wanted to elaborate a little bit from my perspective as an aspiring musician.

How does an electronic band do a live performance,
you ask? Well, first, they’re not completely electronic. Nicolas
switched between acoustic guitar and electric bass, adding background
vocals; Jean-Benoit led the vocals and played a couple keyboards that
looked like portable organ synthesizers or something. They also had a
Texan with long brown hair, beard, and sunglasses back them up with
more keyboard work, and a black guy with cropped dreadlocks laid the
beats with a set of drum pads and hi-hats. (Sorry, I missed their
names, but they’re touring with them.)

That’s what I found most
interesting — I had assumed that pre-programmed drum loops on the
record were pre-programmed drum loops live, but no, the drummer was
actually playing the percussion, and every time he hit a drum pad it
would fire the appropriate synthetic percussive sound. (Maybe they’re
not pre-programmed on the record, then, either?)

We also got to
chat with the station’s sound engineer (Scott) for a couple minutes. He
knows the station’s recording equipment, but not necessarily the band’s
setup; so the band brings along their own sound engineer, who knows the
band’s setup, but not the station’s recording equipment. The two
engineers work together to get things set up for the session prior to
the band arriving. Then the station’s engineer ran the session while
the band’s engineer left to prepare for tonight’s concert.

The performance was excellent.
They played, in order: Venus, Another Day, Run, and Alone in Kyoto;
they kept saying it was “stripped down” because they couldn’t fit all
of their gear into the studio, but the songs sounded 90-95% complete to
me, complete with the atmospheric beach-tide sound in the beautiful
Alone in Kyoto. Check KEXP’s website for a streaming archive of the session; they don’t have it up yet, but I’m sure they will soon.

In between songs, host Amanda Wilde interviewed
Jean-Benoit and Nicolas, and they responded with really honest,
well-thought-out comments. They spoke in excellent, although heavily
accented, English, with a certain mellow-but-smirky attitude that is
distinctly French (and caused several giggles among the Americans in
the recording booth who aren’t accustomed to hearing it). Anyway,
here’s a paraphrased summary of some points I found interesting:

*
The only reason they ended up in the electronica genre is because they
didn’t want some record producer telling them what they should play or
how they should sound. They wanted to have control over their work,
which meant they had to learn the electronics and do it themselves.
[And once you understand the tools, why not use them creatively?] But
they have both played regular instruments since they were kids.

* They do all of their own singing on their new album because:
- Electronica has seen too many guest singers; it’s boring now
- The anonymity of someone else singing your songs helps perpetuate the genre’s “chilly” image
- The new album is much more personal to them; they feel like they were
faking it with the previous one. “Before, we acted like we were in
love, but now, we really want to be in love.”
- It’s tempting to
think, “Someone else could do that part a lot better than I could, so
I’ll just have them do it;” it’s taken them 6 years and numerous
releases to realize that what they perceive as a weakness can add to
the intimacy of their work

* Working on other projects between albums [such as film scores like The Virgin Suicides] helps them to grow creatively, and adds to the distinctiveness of each album

*
It’s easy to write music for a film; your inspiration is right there on
the screen. Original material, on the other hand, can be much more
painful; it’s bizarre and frustrating to sit in a chair for a week
waiting for a song to come to you

* They write songs in English
because it’s like a mask for them; they don’t have a wide vocabulary so
it forces them to be simple and honest, to get to the point

* Maybe all Texans are crazy [in reference to the guy in their band]

*
“We are not scandalous.” Groups like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling
Stones established a rule that in rock, you have to be scandalous, so
everyone is expected to be scandalous now. But rock is all about not
following the rules, so not being scandalous is actually more
rock’n'roll these days. [And it sounds cool to say "we are not
scandalous" with a French accent]

* [Regarding the concert later that day] “Tonight we will be on fire” (Nicolas) also sounds cool with a French accent

When the session was over,
everyone left the booth. I didn’t want to be a fanboy and annoy anyone;
it was a businessy kindof atmosphere. So I just hung out in the hallway
for a couple minutes, waiting for our host to show us out. When Amanda
finished chatting with them, Jean-Benoit and Nicolas stepped into the
hallway from the studio. Nicolas said “Hello” to me, to which I replied
“Bonjour”, and he stepped back into the recording booth to talk with
the engineer. As Jean-Benoit walked by, I was like “Great job, guys,
really good” and he was like, “Thanks,” and I was like FUCKIN’ ROCK,
MAN, I’M TALKIN’ TO THE DUDES FROM AIR!! and he was like, well, he was
gone down the hallway. And then I was like HELL YEAH MOTHAFUCKA and I
raised my devil-signs high in the air and solo-moshed down the hall and
into the parking lot.

Or something like that. Maybe it wasn’t
quite like that. Everything except the stuff in caps-lock. But it could
have been like that. DO NOT UNDERSTIMATE ME, PHEWL.
Rock on.

Then
our gracious host gave us a brief tour of the rest of the station,
which was cool, and that was that.

So far, the weirdest thing about
graduating is the fact that I have no need to plan for classes in the
Fall. I get emails about Fall class schedules, sign up for this, give
feedback on that, and I don’t care because I don’t have to. I just hit “delete”.

I won’t be taking any classes this Fall. I don’t have to plan for that. Because I won’t be in school anymore.

Weird.

An
epic 10-year journey is finally coming to a close. And it’s so freeing,
relieving, and exciting to think of finally getting those loose ends
tied up so I can start work towards some new goals.

David Bowie is running a contest
to see who can create the best “mash-up” — a juxtaposition of any song
from his latest album and an older Bowie song of your choosing.

They offer links for downloading 30-day trial audio software to do the job, and some free samples of Bowie songs.

Winner claims an Audi TT sports coupe, and they’ll publish your track as an MP3 single.

OK, some folks asked what trackback is, since I unwittingly advertised myself as Someone Who Knows.

It’s
a thingie provided by some blog systems, and some commenting systems,
that allows you to add a link to one of your (trackback-enabled) blog
entries onto someone else’s (trackback-enabled) blog entry.

Basically
allowing you to reply to someone else’s blog entry using your own blog,
instead of having to post a comment directly on their site.

Why
not just post a comment and give the link to your blog entry? I dunno.
But, since you can apparently trackback to your own entries, I’m going
to try it with this one, and see what it’s like.

. . .

Ah, there, it worked. See, my previous blog entry now shows it has 1 trackback — which is a link to this entry.

It
seems a bit of a pain to actually create a trackback link — you have
to sign in to your trackback provider and copy-paste some URLs around. Here’s a FAQ
from my comments/trackback provider (Haloscan), and I recommend that
you follow the tutorial links it provides, since the FAQ itself is
kinda skimpy.

The bad news: there is no key to the universe.
The good news: it was never locked.

– Swami Beyondananda (from an Honest Tea bottlecap)

We are rational to the extent that we
are open to criticism, including self criticism; and to the extent to
which we are willing to change our beliefs when confronted with what we
judge to be good criticism.

– Mark Notturno, Science and the Open Society
(found in The New Knowledge Management by Mark W. McElroy)

OK, nevermind all that, I’ll tell you
what’s really pissing me off. It’s President George Dubya Bush and his
Regime. I was never political until this ass-monkey lurched onto the
scene.

They say that nobody is more religiously zealous than a
recent convert. He seems to be on a mission to make this the United
Baptists of America.

Let’s take civil liberties back to the stone age. Let’s…
* Tell women that they are not allowed control over their own bodies
* Tell people with whom they can and cannot get married (better yet, let’s add it to the freakin Constitution! Yeah!)
* Restrict intellectual property rights to large corporations that pay
for my campaign (and we’ll sue those bastard 13-year-olds that are
downloading Britney Spears illegally — that poor Christian girl has to
eat, too!)
* Restrict freedom of speech so that I can
indiscriminately fine you and pull you from the air for saying anything
that I don’t like

Let’s say we’re going to fight terror and eradicate it from the world.
* Distraction from domestic problems, anyone?
* Good luck with that, chumbo. While we’re at it, let’s eradicate fear,
violence, hunger and sickness, too. What? Oh, there’s nobody you can
throw missiles and marines at to solve those problems? Well that’s no
fun!

Let’s use religious words like “good”, “evil”, and
“crusade”. That will help alleviate religious tensions and prove our
good faith in foreign relations. Brilliant!

Let’s run for
re-election, and use the fact that I was president at the time a great
national tragedy happened as a selling point. And let’s pretend like I
handled it well when it becomes more obvious with each passing day that
I royally fucked it up. Great idea!

And he’s awfully freakin’ smug for such a lousy public speaker. I’d like to slap that smirk off his face sometimes.

But
Bush, by himself, is not really that scary. What scares me is the fact
that he still has so much support! Oh my sweet baby Jesus, what are you
people THINKING? I do not want to live in a country that wants to
follow Dubya B. It pisses me off, and it should piss you off, too. I
voted against him in 2000 and I’m going to vote against him again. I
sincerely hope we are not plagued by another 4 years of this
ridiculousness.

Disclaimers:
1) No I don’t have any facts up my sleeve to back up these claims. It’s my damn blog, deal.
2)
I know that not everything up there is directly attributable to Bush;
but he does set the political tone for the country, and I’m not diggin’
the current political tone
3) If you don’t agree with me, post it on your own blog, but don’t comment here cuz I don’t care right now, I’m just venting
4)
If you are an employee of the federal government and you don’t like my
“slap the smirk off his face” comment, it’s just a figure of
speech. I have absolutely no intent or plans to physically harm anyone,
least of all such a manly man as Dubya.
5) I like cookies
6) and ice cream
7) and pretty kittens

I just want people to question more,
and think more about their life, their environment, their beliefs. To
not take so much for granted. To take more control of what’s in your
head. To be a more active participant in your own life; a sentient,
independent force of reason and compassion (they don’t have to be
mutually exclusive).

That’s not to say you blindly rebel,
because that’s no better than blindly following. You’re still blind. I
want people to open their eyes. At the very least, be aware; aware of
the forces acting upon you, aware of their motivations, and your
reactions to them. Family, friends, religion, government, school, all
of these human constructs that complicate an otherwise simple
existence. Get back to basics; get uncomplicated. See through what
you’re told to see; see the truth.

If you want to be patriotic,
do this. Democracy relies upon everyday people making good decisions.
This country (USA) has been lulled into complacency by overabundance
and isolationism. Somebody takes us by surprise, we get scared and fall
back to meaningless religious terms like “good” and “evil” instead of
addressing the real problems in the world and within our own country.
Whatever happened to separation of church and state? Freedom of speech?
Freedom of the press? We’ve got some great ideals but we lack on the
follow-through.

Oh, there are so many, so many things I want to rant about here. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Can I do anything to change it? I like to think so.
But what good can one little person and his blog do in this big bad world?

Altered States?

In class
yesterday, my professor was telling us a story about an interesting
study on psychology students who volunteered to be subjects in
on-campus research experiments for extra credit, whatever, etc. Of
course this is normal practice on many campuses. Psych 101 students are
also taught that sometimes, especially in psychological or sociological
experiments, subjects are tricked — told they are being studied for
one thing, but actually being studied for something else.

So
these researchers surveyed some students and asked which experiments
they participated in and whether or not they thought they were being
deceived in the experiment. The students thought they were being
deceived in double the number of experiments that were actually
deceiving them. More interestingly, the results showed that 65% of the
students purposefully behaved differently than they normally would have
when they thought they were being deceived.

The obvious question
this raises is, since so much research is performed on college campuses
in this way, how much of it is incorrect because of smart-ass students
thinking that they are outsmarting the researchers?

But that’s not why I posted this. I want to extend this concept to American culture in general.

From
the moment we are born, we are deluged with images, ideas,
advertisements, communications every day trying to fuck with our heads
and convince us that we want to buy this, vote for that, live like
this. To maintain some semblance of sanity, we are all forced to
construct mental defense mechanisms to throttle back the onslaught of
psychological forces battling for our mindshare. Born into this
environment, what behaviours do we change in an attempt to outsmart the
forces that we perceive to be attempting to control us?

What
else are we keeping out of our heads? Is it any wonder that, as a
people, we are generally somewhat cynical of new ideas, or concepts
with which we are not already familiar? Could this have something to do
with the fact that Americans are widely perceived as small-minded,
short-sighted, and self-absorbed?

(Although I don’t usually read it cuz it’s too freakin bitter and depressing, Adbusters is a great magazine that makes you think about this kind of stuff.)