Attention Fellow Nerds of Hennepin County: You're Welcome!

Yes, I have a system for us. I have indicated to amazon that I like Star Trek fiction and comics. Amazon makes me aware of all new releases in this area. I then recommend them to my library. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Lately it has worked spectacularly. Check this out:

Star Trek: Year Four
Star Trek: Klingons: Blood Will Tell
Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Space Between

I can personally recommend each of these. And what does it cost us, fellow nerds of Hennepin County? Nothing! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

A Return To Trivia

So, not really biting on the fake baseball story, eh? Fine. I thought it was a very effective piece of writing, but whatever. You people. Here is a more blatant attempt to generate comments using something much less important than baseball, politics.

Here's my take on Obama's comments regarding people who suffer through economic difficulties taking refuge in guns, religion, "antipathy toward different people" (which I think we're all old and mature enough to call racism), and anti-immigration sentiment:

I totally, totally agree. It was the first thing I've heard him say that I really, really liked. See also Bob Dylan's 1963 thoughts on the matter, which played a role in forming my own.

Ironically, the comments I like so much may be the thing that helps Hillary win Pennsylvania if she whips peoples' minds into a frenzy over their misinterpretation. I would certainly rather have Hillary win because I would love for my daughters to grow up "in a world where" (to borrow a phrase from that movie preview guy) there has been a woman as president of the US. But if Obama wins now I won't feel quite as bad about it because at least Obama has said one meaningful thing I agree with. So these controversial comments are really win-win-win - for Obama, Hillary, and me!

Incidentally, my take on immigration is quite radical. I believe in extremely strong borders. However, I would use them very differently from the way they are currently used. I would control the flow of people based on merit, not place of birth. Let me explain.

If someone was born somewhere else, but comes here willing to work hard and not commit felonies, they can stay here as long as they want to continue to be a contributing member of society. However, if a person who was born here has demonstrated that they are a good for nothing bum who commits one crime after another, that person should be expelled, however important they may be to the Minnesota Vikings' playoff hopes.

I Can't Believe This!

Check this out:

Baseball's Twins Spend Millions On 2010 Weather Forecast

MINNEAPOLIS – A source in the Minnesota Twins baseball club's front office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed Monday that the Twins have spent approximately 1.7 million dollars on meteorological consultants and weather forecasting equipment in an attempt to avoid a postponement on opening day 2010, the team's first game in its new open air stadium. If the program continues, the cost could go as high as 2.5 million in the two years between now and then.

It was unknown whether the Twins have generated proprietary forecasting software or if they are using known predictors, enhanced by the expertise of their specialists. Neither the names of the meteorologists nor the forecasting equipment being used were made available. The current National Weather Service forecast for Minneapolis in early April, 2010 calls for a 70 percent chance of light snowfall. The National Weather Service does not make predictions for specific days further than six months away.

In 2006 the Twins were able to get legislation approved that puts a .15 percent sales tax on all items purchased in Hennepin County, which includes downtown Minneapolis, where the stadium is being built. According to the club, this tax will not generate enough money to include a roof on the stadium. This has been a subject of considerable ridicule on Twin Cities talk radio and among bloggers. Over 7 inches of snow fell on Minneapolis on March 31, baseball's opening day this year, which the Twins played in the Metrodome, their home since 1982.

Minneapolis Star Tribune meteorologist Paul Douglas said, "The attempt to pinpoint a day in the distant future upon which it will not rain or snow is fascinating, but I don't know why it would be so expensive. They may have something I don't know about, and you can bet I will be giving them a call." Concerns about weather among Twins insiders apparently escalated last season when the Cleveland Indians, who play in an outdoor stadium in a similar climate, were forced to play several home games at Miller Park in Milwaukee, which has a retractable roof.


Unbelievable!! And yet, they can't find the money to actually just sign actual ballplayers like Johann Santana or Torii Hunter! Although Carlos Gomez clearly outplayed Hunter yesterday and I'm excited about going to the game tonight. That will be sweet. Booooof!

Ahh. Yes. It feels so right! I don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago. We are off the grid, baby! We no longer have cable television at our house. Which means, as you know if you live in the Twin Cities metro, we no longer have a viable way to watch current television at all. I flipped through the channels using the remote that controls the DVD/VCR combo and it's all blue, blue, blue. Instead of sitting there helplessly hoping for something worth watching to be on, I simply switched it off. For the last time.

(I also accidentally broke the actual physical item known as a cable as I was pulling it through the hole in the floor to coil it up for the rest of our lives in this house, so going back wouldn't be easy.)

Of course, we have Netflix and will likely watch an episode or four of Star Trek: The Next Generation every week. Or a movie, or The Office (American, duh. Admit it - it's better.) or Curb Your Enthusiasm or Dr. Katz…but almost always with Bride and never with commercials. Sweet.

Incidentally, this post makes internet history. It is the FIRST and ONLY time that the full name of the television show heretofore known to netizens only as ST:TNG has been spelled out completely. Mystery solved for some of you, I imagine! You're welcome.

Oak Street Cinema You Were Awesome

Several memories...

Eat The Document, the rare Bob Dylan movie that is unavailable anywhere but somehow was shown once at Oak Street

Gigantic, the TMBG documentary

David Lean's epic masterpieces Bridge Over the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia in a double feature that was four times longer than most modern movies but never, ever even close to boring.

However, my favorite has to be The Last Word, starring Matt Wilson and John Munson as the Flops and Mary Lucia as the girlfriend, also not available anywhere and prefaced with a Wilson-Munson live acoustic show I got in the second row for after I stood in line in front of Wilson's proud parents. Priceless. Thrilling.

The Last Word featured the best line ever about a music career. Wilson is asked by his girlfriend's clueless, well-meaning parents if his music is "a career or...a hobby or...?" and he replies in a total deadpan "More like a horrible disease."

R.I.P. Oak Street you were truly awesome. One of a kind.

No, No! Keep Fighting!

It was with a definite regret that I read in the paper that the Hollywood writers are likely to end their strike and begin producing their largely detestable product again. It was similar to the way I felt when I went to Best Buy and bought a new universal remote. Let me explain.

In case you missed it, last November the people who produce and create television shows got in a fight over how to divide up their billions of our dollars. They stopped making new television shows. Also, closer to home, the remote that controls our DVD/VCR combo broke. (There is no truth to the rumor that I threw it hard against the floor to try to fix it.)

This resulted in a nearly complete cessation of television viewing at our house. We were left with no way to navigate DVD menus, so our Netflix account became a rather expensive way to have Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 discs 2 and 3 sit at our house for several months.

I couldn't flip through channels, so I never watched TV as it was broadcast. When there are commercials, no single show really holds my attention – I have to be watching a Family Guy rerun, Letterman, AND Stargate or it's not worth it. Plus there were no new episodes of the only shows I tape and watch later – The Office, Scrubs, Earl, and 30 Rock – so I wasn't doing that either.

Honestly it was quite wonderful. I got more sleep. I was more connected with my family. I did all sorts of other things that are important to me – wrote songs, called friends, exercised, etc. So what happened the night of the day I bought the universal remote? Bride and I watched two (or was it three?) episodes of ST:TNG (good) and then she went to bed while I watched a Saturday Night Live (and Stargate, etc.) I had already seen (very bad). I imagine I will make this poor decision again, but not for a long time, I hope.

I may suggest to Bride that we cancel our cable. This would leave us with an easy choice between snowy TV, Netflix, and doing something useful and meaningful. We might never see a commercial again.

Also, the new "universal" remote is not a perfect match and I see no way to program the VCR to tape my usual NBC Thursdays. This alternately makes me sad and relieved. Screw it. Relieved wins. I'll miss you, Zach Braff, Jason Lee, and Tina Fey. But probably not much. Hey writers! Do society a favor and stay on strike for all eternity! Fucking useless television.

Well. I will now continue to use this blog as my task assignment vehicle, since I've gotten more comments on that than on, say, the average "Wow, I really enjoyed that recent GUH show" blog. Here is the new task:

A musical called "Rainbow Jones" (info) went up in my hometown when I was a child. I liked it and my sister LOVED it. I have searched for a soundtrack album to give her as a surprise every couple of appropriate holidays, but have never found one. I have looked (briefly) at the usual suspects - amazon, eBay, allmusic, and wikipedia, but no dice. This then is your task.

Was any performance of this show ever professionally recorded and released? If so, how can I get a copy of it?

Okay readers, you (well, Bill) did so well on that last test, almost immediately informing me of my mishearing of Brian Wilson's "Your Imagination", that I have something much more difficult. (I imagine – prove me wrong!)

Tonight when I was brushing my teeth with the electric toothbrush (which I do now and then strictly to accelerate global warming), at certain times when it was really vibrating against, say, my back molars, I looked at the digital clock (8:32, incidentally) and the seven (or fewer) little green bars that make up each number went into squigglevision like Dr. Katz. They actually seemed to wiggle independently of one another. Nothing else in the room exhibited this wiggling and I was in no way intoxicated. This is not the first time I have observed this phenomenon. I encourage you to attempt to replicate it and let me know what you find.

The bigger challenge is to answer this question: Why does that happen? Go to it. First prize is an Urban Rust CD. Second prize is two Urban Rust CDs. Third prize is you're fired.

I have named the official

2007 Artist Of The Year

. So be sure to check that out so you know what you may have missed out on. Incidentally, this is THE 2007 Artist Of The Year. City Pages, The Onion, etc. you say? All unofficial. Pretend. Fake. I mean it. Don't believe them. Believe me.

There was a song on the muzak rotation when I worked at the bank that sounded like the Beach Boys singing something that sounded like "Ordinary Baby, Runnin' Wild (Runnin' Wild)". It was a great song with this big rubato section and I can find no trace of it on the internet anywhere. Can YOU help me?

World Premiere Night for Great Uncle Helmer

I had a definite mandate in mind when Karl arrived at my house to rehearse last Sunday. I wanted to do new songs. Mine, his, ours, whatever. So we rehearsed a bunch of new stuff and played it tonight at Dunn Bros. on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. It was great.

Complete Setlist (with link back to this blog)

It was the most new songs we have played since the first GUH show 15 years ago.

"Dirty, Ishy, Sharp, Wet, and Hot", written from the perspective of a one year old, prompted a stranger to come up and share her experiences as a parent and say how much she liked the song. That confirmed my feeling during the song that I was really connecting with some people.

I think Karl's "I Miss You" will become a favorite of mine because of its quirky bass part, which Karl wrote but I get to play. "Tugging at Strings" and "Cub Cubota" were maybe not as successful tonight, but I have confidence they will be great eventually, as they are great songs with some great circular Karl lines. Check this out from "Tugging at Strings" - "Fear is the force that is forcing your face to the window to watch for the things that you fear."

"Isolation For Christmas" brought everyone down and drew complaints, as it should. Well, guess what! That was the edited version as Karl was uneasy with some of the hateful words I actually wrote it with. The truly dark version will be on our Christmas CD, should that ever be finished. But really, it's about caring for people that care for you back in ways that really matter. And Karl's harmony part blows my mind with its Garfunky beauty.

"Powerful Statement" felt really great live. It is much more fun that way than it is practicing it at home. I think as our last song it made a great lead in to the Doc's Kids part of the show. I actually hooked deeply in to the emotion of the song tonight and found quite a bit there to be had. It sort of became true as I sang it.

For anyone who was there and wondering, the near fainting at the end of the song was quite real. I had nothing left after a long day (and some of the previous night) of child care and saw stars and became weak in the knees. I was WRUNG OUT, people! What a fun show.

Doc's Kids were great, as they always are. Maybe some lyrics were blown when they aren't usually, but that was more than made up for by the expressive, melodic trombone solos BPZ was playing. He closed his eyes and let out these intuitive streams of melody that expanded on the songs. I know I've enjoyed his solos before, but tonight somehow took it to a different, very soulful place. Been woodshedding, Z? Was it because I hit you with a banana and made you sad, soulful, and vengeful? (Yes, it was me.)

To top it off, Justin presented me with a collapsible keyboard stand after the show. Now when I play my Technics SX-K700 PCM Keyboard at his rock shows I don't have to bring the cumbersome, decidedly non-collapsible stand. Don't get me wrong, I have great affection for the old stand and the keyboard-securing screws it came with (and which I've managed to not lose for 20 years), but that thing was smacking us in the head from the backseat of his truck when we carpooled to the latest J. Bell show.

Finally, I exchanged some very sincere compliments with Mischa of Mighty Fairly, whose "Hang The Tinsel When" is possibly my favorite original Christmas song on the new Toys for Tots CD. I hadn't really met him before.

I don't know how many toys we got for Toys For Tots. It didn't seem like very many. I am hopeful that we will get more at Eden Prairie on Friday. Go to the show and bring a toy! Get all the information you need right there. Yeah!

Just in case you were excited about that Memphis Evans solo show advertised a couple entries ago let me make clear that it is NOT happening. It has been canceled. For rescheduling information, should any rescheduling happen, click here.

I don't usually recommend videos, not even the one of me doing laps in the backyard inflatable pool (Note: I am not officially confirming the rumor that there is an internet video of me doing laps in the backyard inflatable pool), but this made me laugh so, SO hard. My throat hurts, yet I think I will watch it again. I have not felt such pure joy at an internet video since Cat, I'm A Kitty Cat and I Dance Dance Dance and I Dance Dance Dance. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtbjH8Tm4fM&NR=1

Memphis Evans Solo Show!

Here's the deal. I have a solo show coming up December 7. (info) I'm very excited. These only happen once in a great while and then only by accident. Yes, when it comes to booking my own shows, I really put the Lazy back in Lazy Susan Band. It's all for charity, too. Toys For Tots. So bring a toy and get a free CD with exclusive material from Great Uncle Helmer, Doc's Kids, and several other bands.

In this case (as has been the case for the most part) it was a potential GUH show that Karl could not make. I am opening for The Lazy Susan Band and Doc's Kids, so not a lot of pressure or anything, as I know those guys will carry the show, especially in their hometown. Still, I want the Memphis section to be as special as it is rare.

I started rehearsing this week. I finished an acceptable version of "Powerful Statement", which will make its live debut at this show. That's a song my wife actually had the initial idea for and got the writing started. It's based on the Kelly Clarkson formula and comments on itself in lieu of actual lyrics about a direct object or feeling.

This will also be the debut of lots of songs I've written in the last few years that I'm really proud of but that no one has really heard. "Walk Backwards", "Echo Some Tune", "Dirty, Ishy, Sharp, Wet, and Hot", "I'll Actually Love You Forever", and several others are making me really excited about playing. I'm going to try to get a CD and chord sheets to Justin so he can back me up on some of these, but I'm not promising that will happen. I'll play some old stuff as well and of course will take time for requests. After all, what is a show without an audience?

Well, it's a rehearsal. A rehearsal for which everyone has to drive far and someone gets stuck carting a PA to. As I've often learned the hard way. So come on out to the Winona, MN Acoustic Café on Lafayette and support the live!

I am now an eBay seller. I have so much useless junk in my basement and in my parents' basement. I mean...so much incredible, undervalued, potentially treasured memorabilia!! Did I say junk? Is this junk to you?

Nooooo. Not junk. Well worth the quarter it cost me to list it. Buy it now for $9.99!

Fox 9 News: Only Slightly Misleading!

So on Tuesday night the local Fox affiliate had two vans, a towering antenna, bright lights, and the talent (Maury Glover) all set up to show the debris from trees on our front lawn. The debris was used to illustrate a story about recent thunderstorm damage. This was slightly misleading. Here's the backstory.

On Saturday morning at 3:23 a.m. (I woke up immediately) half of the giant tree in our BACK yard fell directly between our shed and our house, a perfect fall for which we are very thankful. It crushed a third of our back yard fence and took out our power, phone, and cable lines. Our usual friendly contractor, who built our bedroom addition and deck, had a crew out chopping up the fallen half and taking down the remaining half of the tree the next day. A tree in our FRONT yard, untouched by the storm, had a similar trunk "fault line" and was deemed likely to fall on the house in a similar future storm, so we had them start taking that one down too.

By Tuesday evening they had done quite a number on it and its branches were scattered around the front yard. This is the debris you see surrounding and menacing the Fox 9 reporter. If they had panned up only a LITTLE bit higher, you would have seen the suspiciously neat cuts of the chainsaws. It was definitively not storm debris and these particular branches had actually damaged nothing. He does say "branches like these" did the damage, so it's not technically an inaccurate report.

It was exciting to see our house on TV and we would have taped it except that, of course, our cable is still out and our VCR doesn't do so well with the plain old airwaves.

Watch the story!

Happy Elvis Week everybody!

Anyone ever play the video game "The Sims"? I was booting up the internets, sitting at a desk looking out a window of my house. A woman pulled up in a minivan, parked in the street, obviously intending to go to the park across the street. She seemed somewhat out of sorts and was apparently moving a child safety seat from one seat in her car to another, a frustrating process with which I am familiar. Anyway, another woman pulled up behind her and she also looked a little sad. It is an overcast day - the kind of day where Dr. Bob would have had to give us a pep talk in Viking Chorus to keep us from singing flat and slow.

So then the two women started talking. I was vaguely listening to them, but the nice weatherproof window here kept me from hearing actual words. They sounded exactly like Sims. And as they talked, their moods both improved. By the time they were ready to walk together over to the volleyball court, they were talking loud, laughing and slapping each other on the back. I imagined pop up menus had appeared next to both of them and someone had set them to "talk...joke...touch...talk...comfort...joke...etc." It was very funny if you've ever played Sims.

This articulates and explains clearly something I have struggled with for years:

http://funl.blogspot.com/2007/06/loudness-war.html

What a great article. I remember mixing and mastering the Urban Rust and Jubilant Dogs CDs and being frustrated at my seeming inability to match the volume of, say, They Might Be Giants' John Henry, which has always struck me as a singularly loud, monolithic slab of continuous volume.

The problem comes when a J. Dogs or UR fan who is also a TMBG fan (someone like me, for example) is listening to their iPod (okay, I don't have or want an iPod) on shuffle and they turn up for something I've produced, then get blown away when some latter day TMBG comes on next. Youch! This is exactly why I don't have an iPod. I'm still waiting for the great leap forward where this problem will somehow be solved.

"I'm at the library. What's up?"

Should answering your phone with this phrase not give you pause? As you are saying "I'm at the library" do you not think "Perhaps I should get off my damn self important phone so people can enjoy that special public peace that is now the exclusive province of libraries." If you're three people in the last five minutes here at Ridgedale, no you do not.

Well, I guess google bought blogger so now I have a google account. That sucks, but I didn't want to start a new blog somewhere else. Anyway, here's what I was going to say.

I am watching the end of Elvis' "duet" with Celine Dion from American Idol on youtube. It is interesting and I'm glad I watched it. Nothing I have ever seen better exhibits why I love Elvis with all my heart and feel, at best, indifferent to Ms. Dion. Elvis is very obviously pouring everything he has into the song, which played a major role in turning his career around. He seems to be holding nothing back. He has thought about what he is saying and he is saying it as if his life depended on his fans getting it. Whether it is true or not, and I think it is, to watch Elvis during this performance (as I have several times) is to look directly into his soul.

In sharp contrast to the American country boy giving everything he has to a song he believes in and conveys every word of, Ms. Dion is exposed more than ever as a distant, if arguably virtuosic, technician. She reveals nothing of herself, neither feeling nor conveying any meaning beyond her robotic conveyance of the notes. I'm glad I watched it and I need never watch it again. God bless you, Elvis.

Check out this quote (from this article) then check out my thoughts below.

"And I wasn't there, either, when Roger Clemens won his 300th game," Selig said afterward, declining in a small scrum to commit to being there when Bonds passes Aaron. "It's something I'll determine at some point."

Here's a thought. You're the comissioner of baseball. You are (presumably) a baseball fan. You can get great tickets or a skybox to see Barry Bonds break the all time career home run record. At no cost to you. Wouldn't you WANT to be at that game? Some people will pay hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars to be at that game. And yet, from this article, it seems Selig is reluctant to commit to going to the game. Selig's done some great things (interleage play, geographic restructuring of divisions, etc.) but sometimes I find him baffling (this article) or even awful (attempted contraction of the Twins).

Response to Chazz Vader's "Tag, You're It".

Chazz Requested I write a journal entry with six facts about myself. Very well.

1. I feel a constant drive to exploit my talent and accomplish something in the musical arena. Yet, whatever I actually accomplish, whatever I do to feed this drive, so far it has never felt like enough, mainly because everything has failed to reach a large enough audience. The process of creating music is its own reward, of course. And creating a great recording is enjoyable for its own sake independent of its audience. Still, I have begun to wonder if it is worth the time and money it takes to do such things.

2. I love being a full time father. In contrast to the pursuit of some sort of audience or money for my music, being a father is incredibly, immediately rewarding every day that I really throw myself into it, which is most days.

3. I have been a great employee only once. Most of my jobs working for other people have been spectacular failures with great stories to match. However, when I was self-employed I was arguably my town's best private guitar teacher. (See also #2.)

4. I just spilled coffee on myself for the second time in as many days. At least none went on the computer.

5. Of the literally hundreds of recordings I've made of my own songs the three that haunt me the most are "An Alien Comes To Earth And Joins A Softball League", "Pop Tab Town", and "Exactly And Rover". I just realized that this is possibly because they describe my actual life, albeit in slightly metaphorical terms.

6. I have my wife to thank for encouraging me to go to Europe and I have incredibly warm feelings about both (very different) trips. In Codaesti, Romania we cared for 0-3 year olds in a (very) rural clinic. In Ibiza, Spain we enjoyed great food, beaches, mini golf on concrete, bowling, and our honeymoon in general. I can't wait to go there with our kids someday.

Absolute: Episode 3: The Greatest Vanity License Plate of All Time

The greatest vanity license plate of all time was recently spoted by me. It is:


HRUDUDU

If you have read Richard Adams' magnificient Watership Down then you already laughed. If you have not read it or if you do not remember reading it well enough to have laughed, it is this book right here.

Of course, you can get it free at your local library.

Just back from a show at the Freighthouse Dunn Bros. It was all to benefit Toys For Tots 2006. We got five items and gave out five of the holiday CD featuring exclusive Christmas performances from five different bands including Great Uncle Helmer and Doc's Kids.

It was a weird show. I think there were some people at the place who were annoyed. I also think we played louder and perhaps more obnoxiously to needle them. I enjoyed the show, even though I am totally dad tired and had a long day that began shortly before 6 a.m. when my cats triple teamed me to demand my attention, food, water, and clean litter. One hits the door to the bedroom repeatedly with his front paws. One runs and jumps on me and knocks things off the nightstand if I don't respond. One just cries in a mournful, scratchy voice. By the way, I did mean to type "dad tired". I think it is an extremely accurate phrase.

I did have a lot of fun at the show. Bill Turner opened the show for us, playing Hope Of Deliverance and Biker Like An Icon (which I sang) followed by his new song "Corn Bend", his old song "Total Peace", and finally "Blackbird". I liked doing McCartney songs on a night when people would maybe expect Lennon songs. I meant to take a survey of the people listening as to who their favorite Beatle was. Shoot. Oh well.

Tried out a new segment celebrating freedom of speech called "Say what you want about Billy Joel". We learned that he is talented and that if you switch around the letters of his names it becomes "Jilly Boel" which makes some people feel happy. We also did another couple of "speaking in tongues" parts. These were great and in keeping with what I feel is the spirit of the game.

"Hold Me Only In The Dark" was said to be about worms that live on land and "worms" that live in water, meaning clams. I love that this interpretation ignores the lines about "She did such and such and I did such and such" and any romantic liaison suggested. The song has a lot of imagery of earth, shore, water, etc. I will think about those things as I sing it from now on and I will enjoy it more than I ever have.

"Oh, No!", possibly my favorite GUH song of all time, was said to be about "cleaning out your brain". I like that. In a way, that's how the song was constructed. Karl had a bunch of ideas for songs. They were not necessarily connected to one another. We ended up putting them together to make one Uber-song. (Perhaps I suggested they would fit together? It was more than ten years ago and I don't quite remember.) We worked out the transitions, the form, new words for some verses, and practiced it over and over and over. It is a very tricky song to play. I added the introduction - the a minor-C Major-D Major-G Major riff that also appears in Crayon Pictures and I'm Dead. I first started playing that riff while playing the Rolling Stones' song Wild Horses, which I was playing a lot right around then.

I improvised a song called "I Hate A Parade" about being stuck in traffic while the stupid Holidazzle Parade sponsored by stupid bank TCF went by in front of me. I was late to the show and we got a bit of a late start and I felt kind of stressed out at first. This song was good and I tried to recreate it after I got home. It worked okay but is not quite as good as the original improvisation. I'll keep trying. Sometimes that initial improvisation can never be matched. "Everything Makes Me Sad" and "Cold Feet" are two songs I tried developing from their initial improvised version and they just couldn't be improved upon, or even really effectively replayed ever again. Thankfully, I taped those performances.

We also did a "new song showcase" featuring two songs whose titles have four syllables and rhyme with each other. My "I Came To Play" met Karl's "Air Mandalay". Good stuff. Thanks to our good people who came out to see us and hang out and be cool and donate toys. It really means a lot to us and we're glad you're there. And thanks especially to those who brought toys to donate. We'll see you at Tuesday's show!

Absolute: Episode 2: Album of the Decade

I have decided to expand the thing introduced in yesterday's post. Instead of Five Greatest, it will now be called Absolute. For the next debate, I will name the Album of the Decade for this decade, the two thousand zeroes. It is:

How I Came To Cry These Tears of Cool by Colin Spring

For more information on this album, click here. Debate.

The Five Greatest

Why does everyplace I use on the internet want me to change the way I work with them? "Try yahoo mail beta!" "Try new Blogger Beta!" NO. I want it to stay the same. Oh well.

Anyway, here's my idea. I will occasionally post the five greatest something then invite debate. This is episode 1 of this new feature.

The Five Greatest Male Lead Actors in Television History

5. Bruce Willis, David Addison, Moonlighting
4. Patrick Stewart, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
3. David Duchovny, Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files
2. David Boreanaz, Angel, Angel
1. William Shatner, Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek

You may suggest corrections to this list as well as suggesting new lists. Thank you. Begin the debate.

Tonight's Great Uncle Helmer show at the Freighthouse Dunn Bros. Coffee in Minneapolis was really fun and strange. Among other things, it contained the longest, silliest version of "Kansas City, Nebraska" ever. Karl sneezed right at a break in the verses and everyone cracked up. The song completely stopped. He said he always thought that the unavoidable sneeze was merely a convention of poorly plotted suspense fiction but that now he is a believer.

Then, instead of hacking apart another terrible bass solo over those slippery chords, I tried to tell a joke that required Karl to remember a single line. He did not remember it from the hour and a half before when I had told him it. This forgetting did not in any way detract from the joke.

Finally, the last part of the song was expanded with several good improvised rhymes about the mysterious woman while I insisted over and over that "it's just me". Sounds long and silly, doesn't it. Well believe me it was.

As promised, we also gave the "speaking in tongues" feature its Twin Cities debut and it was a huge success. Karl and I felt very impressed and edified by some of our favorite listeners' interpretations of our songs. Here are the ones I can remember (I just got home):

Zo Bid (click titles for lyrics)
A frequent listener suggested that "Zobid" was the name of a prescription drug and that the person in the song may have run out of their prescription. I love this interpretation, in that it accepts the words of the chorus (and title) as they are rather than shifting them mentally to their near equivalents in the English language, as I realize now I have been needlessly doing.

Rio Grande
Another frequent listener suggested this song was about "differentiating from your family of origin" an interpretation I immediately called "exactly right". I was challenged on this because I had said there were no wrong answers, so I clarified and said there were "right" and "exactly right" answers.

Bass Guitar
A previously total stranger suggested this song was a close cousin of "I'm A Little Teapot". This fascinates me and I will have to listen to it more, or maybe read over the lyrics again. A more frequent listener with the advantage of having heard the song several times suggested it was about a father's love for his child. These are all good readings of the song.

Introducing the Door
This song was said to be about wanting someone to leave and also about spiritual growth. I agree with both. I would add only that it is Karl's greatest "mystery" song and that no interpretation is complete.

There was another song that was said to be about baseball, but I can't remember which one. After that interpretation, we played "Ron Cey", which needs very little interpretation and is indeed one of our more overt songs and is definitively about baseball, marriage, and the passage of time.

I know there were more and if anyone who was there remembers them, please put them in comments on this blog entry and I will publish them. I am sleepy now and having trouble remembering. Thank you and thanks to all who attended this very fun, strange show.

Karl and I had a fun show in New Richmond, Wisconsin tonight.

Our idea was two high energy sets of our fastest, catchiest, most accessible songs. This was modeled after our polished and well received set at the Bryant Lake Bowl last April. Well, the people who come out on a Wednesday night in New Richmond, Wisconsin are maybe not exactly the same folks who come to Bryant Lake Bowl at 11 p.m. on a Thursday in April. We felt like we were a little too loud and high energy by the end of the first set.

We ended up emphasizing slower more "folk" like material. This is fine. I like that material at least as much as the fast material. Also, I guess we were guessing somewhat because we couldn't see the crowd or their reaction for the bright lights shining on us. (Incidentally, I counted the lights (not out loud, just in my head) during the break in "Starguise" "I can't see the moon...3,6,9,12,13, ooh 13!...but my rocket charts should be here pretty soon".)

Basically, we played a good show in a very nice venue, The Old Gem Theater. There were not all that many people there, maybe 15 or 20 at the high point. But we moved four or five CDs and Karl and I played very well together. Actually, from a musical standpoint, I felt like we played very, very well. I would even say we gave definitive readings of the following songs:

(Today I Don't Mind Livin' In A) Small Town
Road Movie to Berlin
Car of Jonas
I in the Sky
Bass Guitar
Introducing the Door
Buffalo Bill's Grave
Dead
Inkwell

Tonight also marked the grand debut of the new GUH innovation, "speaking in tongues". In other words, we acknowledge that some of our songs are confusing, mysterious, and obscure. In tonight's feature, we asked audience members to interpret our bizarre words and tell everyone what they felt a given song meant. Tonight's selection was "Bass Guitar". The audience member who responded said it was about a "bass guitar". So true.

And yet, somewhat incomplete and non definitive. Perhaps next time we will choose a different song for this feature. But make no mistake, it will become a regular feature of GUH shows. Prepare if you wish, although we are aiming for pentecostal church style inspired interpretations that just hit you like a lightning bolt.

Xanadu was interesting. I sang very, very quietly, letting the microphone do the work, and came a little bit closer to getting the harmony part correct. Only very rarely have I been satisfied with my part on that live. Maybe one or two times. I was not happy with tonight's either, but I came closer to something I think I could really settle in to. Is that weird for a song I've sung for twelve years?

Buffalo Bill's Grave had tremendous dynamic range. On the quiet, slow sections I flat picked individual strings for the first time instead of strumming. This is something I will do from now on as the dynamics of the guitar part then match the variable tempo.

Inkwell felt really great tonight too. It really flowed and I felt like I sang it gently and had a little bit of my young voice back that is audible on the studio version from winter 1995. Karl was really on tonight as well, on this song and on everything else.

Thank you to Kathy and Rick at the Old Gem, the town of New Richmond and the Wednesday night music series, and especially everyone who came out to see us. We hope you enjoy the CDs you bought.

Saturday, September 16: Joy to the World

I headed out to Karl's on Saturday morning knowing that I wanted to record a traditional Christmas song for the Toys for Tots program that Justin is organizing. I knew I wanted to do the one where the men stop singing, the women sing, then the men answer them. I just couldn't remember what song that was. Karl and I were going to go out and try to find an LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship) so I could solve this mystery. When I got to his place, there was one on his bookshelf already.

I looked through the book and found out the song I wanted was "Joy to the World". I had no idea how we would arrange it for Great Uncle Helmer. I thought maybe we could do four vastly different verses, recorded separately then spliced together. The first arrangement we decided to record was sort of a reggae thing. I played bass and Karl played the melody on trombone. We did several live takes working out parts. Finally we played through four verses and were happy with all four. I was still thinking we would only use one of the verses. But then we kind of decided maybe not.

Karl wanted to do another trombone part and I wanted to do a snare drum part. We decided to record these live at the same time. This took a few takes until we got one that I was thrilled with. Although Karl was not very happy with his harmony trombone performance, I really wanted to keep that take and told him, "I said everything I could possibly say on the snare drum with that take! I think your second trombone sounds great." So we kept it.

As we were listening back to it, Karl thought we should sing a little bit of "Angels We Have Heard On High" between a couple of the verses where there was some extra (accidental) time. We did two voices live, then I wanted to do a third part, so Karl also sang and doubled his original vocal up an octave, sliding down at the end to a funky little minor seventh. We had had a pretty fun vibe going already and now we were really cracking up.

The bass had slipped in to a heavy, non diatonic, chromatic quarter note riff during verse four. This was something Andy Honigman and I had started up at various times during Jubilant Dogs and Honigman rehearsals. Karl and I decided to stomp on the floor to go along with this. We tried a couple of different ways of miking it, but pointing the mike directly at our feet, then turning up the bass frequencies and adding a little reverb worked best. Karl also added a little bit of tambourine to verses two and three.

Karl added his banjo ukelele that was a gift from his bride. Initially this instrument was so badly out of tune that I only wanted it on verse two and only very percussively. But we accidentally activated the wrong microphone while recording it. We used the mike that was pointing at the floor where we had stomped. The ukelele sounded very far away and not as noticeably out of tune. It made us laugh and we left it in for three verses.

We wanted to have a sort of wheezing sound like in They Might Be Giants' song "They Might Be Giants". Karl got an ocarina and I got a party noisemaker from his case of weird instruments. We briefly considered a rainbow colored hooter, but it was diatonic and in D flat. We were in D. The ocarina and noisemaker we put only on verse four, which had taken on a parade like quality.

Finally, I said I wanted to do an Elvis like recitation. I love Elvis' songs where he talks ("Are You Lonesome Tonight", "Are You Sincere", "Hurt", and, most like this project, "America The Beautiful") and I wanted to try to capture that same sincere, heartfelt speech. I was glad Karl went along with it. I really felt the meaning of the words as I was saying them and tried to phrase them in a way that conveyed something important and true.

As I recorded it, the juxtaposition of the heartfelt recitation and the completely goofy background music became increasingly amusing. Karl was laughing so hard he was almost crying. He was trying not to make any sound and I could see his shoulders shaking as he was hunched over with his face in his hands. Finally during the fourth verse, only two lines from the end, I lost it as well. We did a punch in where I spoke only the last couple of lines and we were done. We had our traditional christmas song that was also a completely creative thing that only Karl and I could have done. It's both one hundred percent public domain traditional Christmas song and one hundred percent Great Uncle Helmer.

The Show

We played a show that night at a new place, Goochy Noochy's in St. Croix Falls. It was great. They have a PA there, so all we brought were mikes and instruments. It wasn't as big of a room as the Freighthouse Dunn Bros., but it was a much better arrangement with a real stage, nice tables and chairs, and a real back room where people who don't care about the music can get the hell out of our sight. A few people told me they really liked the part where I strolled around the room and even went out the front door briefly during "Shadowy Figure". I don't sing on that song and the guitars weren't plugged in, so it was a natural thing for me to do.

We went back to Karl's house and had some popcorn and beer and watched Arrested Development until I was falling asleep.

Emmanuel

The next morning we started on another Christmas recording, not for the Toys for Tots thing but maybe for a GUH holiday CD. Karl really wanted to do "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and I have always liked that song as well. He recorded a brilliant one take fingerpicked nylon string guitar backing. Karl's fingerpicking is not like anyone else's I have ever heard and I love it on this tune. (And on "Tall As The Mountains", "It's All Too Clear", etc...)

I had a very low, resonant voice from staying up late the night before and the night before that (reading a very moving and captivating book, Winning With A Bad Hand by Mary Christopherson - I couldn't put it down.) So I recorded all five verses in the LBW, leaving one verse for an instrumental.

Then I recorded a low humming during the instrumental with the idea that we would add three parts above it. It took me about twenty minutes to write the other three parts, using my voice leading rules I memorized and practiced over and over at St. Olaf. There were parts where I heard a lot of movement and parts where I just heard block chords, so that's what I did. Then I recorded the other three parts, doubling only the "soprano" where my voice was a little thin.

I am really happy with where that recording is at right now, and it might only need a violin on the instrumental verse and maybe as an obligato on verse five. We'll see if Karl gets any good ideas about it. It is as normal as our "Joy to the World" is unusual, which was our intention all along. Or maybe it just became our intention after it happened. Yeah, I think that's it.

Questions And Comments From Readers

I here at memphisevans got a surprisingly insistent, almost hostile denial response when I accused myself of a possible lack of professionalism. Read the comments from Chazz Vader on the previous post if you have not already.

Without using inflammatory, loaded, and value judgment types of terms such as "professional", "tight", or "smooth" I will try to explain more concretely some habits that I sometimes feel derail a typical show I might play:

-Long moments where the performers stare at the disordered set list in ten point type on the floor at their feet for 30 seconds or more, killing any momentum.

-Songs utterly destroyed by instruments that are dramatically out of tune with themselves or one another.

These are really the only things I can think of right now that I would completely eliminate. Other things that are questionable, but sometimes acceptable or even enjoyable would include:

-Blown chords and lyrics where other chords or lyrics are substituted on the spur of the moment.

-Playing songs we do not know (see also previous bullet point).

Things I enjoy and have no intention of getting rid of are:

-Leaving room for improvisation, whether it is a)a part of undefined length or melody in the middle of a song, b)playing a different song from the one on the set list, or c)completely making up a song on the spur of the moment.

-Responding to questions, requests, and general crowd mood

And speaking of questions, let's reply to some of the specific questions raised by Chazz:

CV: Isn't the point to be entertaining?

ME: Yes. But there are so many different ways to be entertaining. I certainly do not want to play things the same way a brazillian times or try to sound just like a given recording. But I want people who have never heard me before to be drawn in by something they can possibly begin to understand and feel they are a part of.

CV: What if, during Cowtown, you break a string. Does the list change? Does that event decrease your percieved "professionalism"?

ME: Yes, the list would change. What I think would be utterly, totally "professional" would be to have a backup guitar handed to me by a roadie during the song so that it would hardly be noticeable that I had broken a string. This is an area where economics has an impact on a band. I am not willing to purchase and bring an extra guitar to shows. I am not willing to pay a roadie or guitar tech. As it is, in a GUH show, Karl would do a tune or two by himself and I would go to a different room and change my string.

CV: Some of my favorite shows have been due to some strange, unexpected event that happens during the show. I don't consider this less "professional".

ME: This is very true. I like unique and strange events and value their ability to help create a unique and strange show, never to be repeated. That is always special. Honigman's "Nuclear War" at The Hall in Milltown WI occurs to me in this regard.

Lilpudn writes: Looked at the playlist for Saturday and was amazed at how many songs you do in a 2 hour show. It doesn't seem like that many.

ME: Actually, that may be a little over ambitious on my part. We will probably not get through that many songs. But we will have a possible roadmap we can either jump off from if we feel like it or completely rely on and stick to if we want to.

Thanks for the thoughtful, passionate comments on shows. I appreciate your interest and look forward to tonight's show. I have added a special "relentless melancholy" set pending Karl's approval. We'll see what we do when we do it.

Another Fun Show with Justin

Had a fun show at Grand Ave. Dunn Bros. with Justin last night. Inspired by a misspelling on the set list, I went by the new name of Blue Bassa during the show.

It was about what I expected - more polished because we rehearsed but at the same time some of the immediate thrill of reconnecting with old songs I haven't played in years is wearing off. "Heart Shaped Things" and "Bittersweet Love Song" bored me a little, but not so much that I wouldn't want to play them. And I'm also realizing that several of those old songs, most notably "Hourglass" last night, are very high quality even without any nostalgia factor.

Plus there were, as always, a lot of really fun spontaneous musical moments playing with Justin, who's the best other technical guitarist I have ever played with on a regular basis.

Politics a Hit!

The blog on Pawlenty's speech got the most comments of any of the 37 blog entries thus far. I can see why bloggers write about politics. Such attention! Nevertheless, I think most of my writing about it would be boring and pedantic and so will leave it to those who don't care that they are boring and pedantic.

Preview the Saturday GUH Show

I have decided to release the set list for Saturday, July 1st's 7:30 p.m. Great Uncle Helmer show at the Freighthouse Dunn Bros. three days ahead of time. Check it out here.

My goal is to have the show go a little more smoothly and professionally than our Anodyne show last week. Not that it wasn't good and fun, but I would like to see if we can run a two hour show that is as tight and engaging as our 45 minute Bryant Lake Bowl set last April.

Thanks for reading.

I had a really good time playing a show at Anodyne Coffee House with Karl last night. (reconstructed set list) It was a strange show. We made a lot of jokes. Karl made a joke about someone walking by, not hearing the Eagles, and walking right past, so I played Desperado. Karl and I used to play that song years ago and I was stunned to hear myself recall all the words perfectly. I sang it in a somewhat "jokey" but not unpleasant and strangely powerful feeling voice. It is the voice I would use if I were in musical theater without microphones.

I was not very surprised to find myself blowing the words disastrously on Foreign Movie and California. Foreign Movie is always a gamble, since I don't rehearse it, it's never been a regular part of our set, and C) it's a very different texture than most of our songs. There is no supportive strumming. It's just a lead guitar riff I sing words to. Karl plays some nice harmonica blues to fill it out. We should emphasize it more in our sets as I really like it. It also worked well as an intro to California, which I am a little sick of and should maybe retire for a while unless it is requested.

We also played "Synthesis" which was fun but very silly, as always. I did a new Metallica-like guitar riff for it instead of trying to play anything like the parts on the 1993 tape. That was good. I wonder if Karl ever wishes I would play the same, reliable thing every time on a given song. Probably not. (Speaking of which, last night I even diverged from the preset solo on "Rio Grande" when it was noted I had not used my whammy bar on my electric guitar. I then did extreme whammy overkill.)

We also improvised a song called "It's All Your Fault". All I can remember is that it was in Bb, capoed fret 3 for Karl, on bass for me, and the chords were Bb, F, cm, Bb, then a descending bassline thing. I hope Karl can remember the rest of it, as he sang the words and melody. It was pretty good.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Karl and I meticulously mapped out and rehearsed a flowing, smooth, professional two hour set of our best songs and cut out the jokes, requests, and mistakes. We sort of did that at a 45 minute set at Bryant Lake Bowl a few months ago. It was a real stage, theater, and good PA with a sound engineer. It was a world of difference from our usual shows.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy it tremendously either way and I think we are good at playing an appropriate show for a given room, crowd, etc. We've planned out long shows before and it's not that much more effective for the coffeehouse scene than just having a list of songs up there with us. I don't think. Maybe it is. Which leads me to another thing I would like to be able to do, which is to experience a GUH show as an audience member experiences it. Any thoughts on this, regular GUH show attendees? Comment below if you wish.

We ended with "Inkwell" which I really like. That song was the reason I felt like I needed to make a really good recording of our repertoire. That became the old man will travel CD. Karl sort of "ba-ba"'d some horn parts during some of the final lines of verses last night and I thought, "Yeah! That would be cool!" I am almost never satisfied with any recordings I've made and now I wish that "Inkwell" had those cool mellow horn parts during some of the verses. They would make the connection to '70s mellow rock so tremendously overt. Maybe a little Hal Blaine or Karen Carpenter drum part. Yeah. The horn part would resemble the horn part on my solo recording "Milestone Motel (The Weird Thing Was The Rain)". Maybe when we sell out of the first printing of omwt (about 50 left from the original 471 from January 1997) we'll remix some of the tunes for the second printing.

The other thing about Inkwell is what a totally joint composition it is. I tried improvising with a lot of different people in 1992-1994 (my last couple years of college) and coming up with stuff where it was "I say something, you react, I react, you react, etc." and "Inkwell" is by far the most fully and perfectly realized result of that ideal.

Don't forget to comment on the GUH performance issues raised above if you wish. Thanks for reading.

So I understand blogs are supposed to have a political component. Here is a quote from our governor taken from his speech accepting his party's endorsement.

"Now I know I may not be in some of your wildest dreams but I can tell you what your worst nightmare is," Pawlenty told delegates at his party's state convention. "It's one of the big spendin', tax raisin', abortion promotin', gay marriage embracin', more-welfare-without-accountability lovin', school-reform resistin', illegal-immigration supportin' Democrats for governor who think Hillary Clinton should be president of the United States."

To me this sounds like (very) thinly veiled hatred. At the very least it suggests and exploits resentment and bigotry towards gays, immigrants, and the poor. Am I wrong? How is that statement supposed to be interpreted?

Now yes, I hate paying taxes. I give plenty of money to charities that reflect my values, partly in an effort to reduce the amount of my money going to the government, since they generally waste it on foolish endeavors. (Iraq anyone?) But I don't think putting the hurt on hard working Mexicans, needy families, and gays who just want to have legal love is the answer. I don't see why that's even a priority.

While I would never have voted for the governor, I had heard him speak on the radio and thought he was a reasonable person. I did not think he was one of these hateful, pandering idiots. It appears I was wrong.

There. Now my blog has a political component. Enjoy. What do YOU think?

Memphis Earns, Writes Rave Review of Self, Friend

Awesome show with Justin at the Grand Ave Dunn Bros. Coffee. Really nice crowd, including several friends and family. Played some requests for originals which is always nice. Good people working there gave me a free sandwich and coffee. I feel so blessed to have so many good friends who are also great musicians. Who else would get to play such fun back to back shows with Kaptain Karl and J. Bell in the same week? Maybe BPZMAG I suppose. Thanks Justin for inviting me and thanks everyone who came and enjoyed it.

We revisited a lot of the Urban Rust material and it was really fun to look back and play that stuff again. I was playing bass like I did in that band and I really missed Ben hitting the kick drum beats with me. We played Hourglass last and it was really cool how much meaning that song took on.

We played some of the best of Justin's more recent stuff like "If I Had My Way", some of which I've never played on or have only played second guitar on. I was reminded of Art Garfunkel talking about the 1981 Central Park reunion show with Paul Simon. He said he was excited to sing stuff like "American Tune" and "Slip Slidin' Away" which Simon had written and released years after they originally broke up.

Possibly complete set list from tonight (as best as I remember it) is here. Other highlights were a long, long "Dream I Had Last Night" which incorporated and, by the final verse, completely fused with the Doc's Kids song "Alison's Quiche". We traded some lead vocals - I enjoyed singing "Melody Dances" and it was cool that Justin knew all the words to "Bittersweet Love Song" and seemed to have more fun singing it than I might have. It completely cracked me up when we were playing "Nothing At All" and I realized Justin's lyrics sheet had been printed out directly from the part of my website dedicated to Urban Rust, complete with web address at the top of the page and underlined purple links at the bottom.

At the beginning during my solo set I was somewhat nervous and I felt a little shaky, but I was proud to debut my solo guitar fingerpicking arrangement of Paul Simon's "The Obvious Child" and my own brand new song written this month "Big Day Tomorrow" (lyrics). I played "Echo Some Tune" (lyrics) for the second time in public and ended with the GUH favorite "Chimney", which sounded weird and lacked for Karl but my background verse about "my plan for loving Tam" was brought out somewhat. Not that that is necessary or even necessarily beneficial.

As if it wasn't enough to reunite with a great musician and play a great set of nostalgic, heartfelt music to appreciative friends and some new fans (I even got rid of 4 Urban Rust CDs, or 1 percent of the total supply in my basement), when I got out to my car I heard the last out of a rain delayed Twins victory over Kansas City, Joe Nathan making his third save in as many tries in a 2-1 victory.

And as if THAT weren't enough, when I got home and was loading my gear back in to my basement's resting-gear-keepin'-spot I noticed a water bottle I thought I'd lost at the GUH show in February. Turns out it was wedged in a dark place between my speakers and my power amp/mixer. A water bottle not such a huge deal, you say? This water bottle was a gift from my wife and was meant to show her support of me. It is purple and sporty and sentimental and I had been feeling very sad thinking that I lost it. What a sweet night.

In summary, I had a blast and sincerely wish to do it again. If you have not heard Justin you should check him out here and if you are reading this blog and do not have Urban Rust's 1999 "Leave This Place" CD, e-mail me at my website with your mailing address with the subject line "Leave This Place" and I will send you one at no cost to you. J. Bell you rule. Thanks man.

Two Cool Websites

Another great GUH show last night at the Freight House Dunn Bros. in Minneapolis. Thanks to all who came. Show is documented here. But that's not necessarily what we're here to talk about.

Two websites recently came to my attention. The first is a must see for all nerds such as myself. It is Ten Ways To Destroy The Earth.

The second is The Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall of Shame. This site has nothing to do with trucking. Rather, it makes affectionate fun of musical artists who have nothing more to offer with a given song and so simply change keys at the end for no particularly good reason.

Personally, I like the gear change. I have consciously inserted it in at least two original songs, "Maybe" (from GUH's Synthesis tape) and "We'll Go On Forever". "Forever" is a joke love song that exists primarily to modulate up a whole step 6 times until finally the chorus is being screeched out an octave above its original home. A song which, with the benefit of hindsight, GUH should not have played at an actual wedding reception.

They have missed a famous one that occurred to me immediately - "The Letter" by the Box Tops. There is no foreshadowing of the rather sudden, if well executed, move to D flat from C. This is painfully obvious during the Great Uncle Helmer version of this song as the chords become barred instead of open and the sound changes with substantially less panache than on the 1967 hit single.

Also, "Free Again" by Alex Chilton has a pretty obvious heavy handed gear shift, although it's up a fourth, not a half step.

Great Uncle Helmer Seventh Album Progress Report

Today's GUH recording sessions went very well. We started with "Bass Guitar". I recorded acoustic guitar and a vocal, playing both at once. The first take was plenty good. Then we set up for live recording of both vocals with acoustic guitar and moved on to "The Longest Conversation". After the first take was disrupted by severe coughing the second take was not very good and stopped almost immediately. The third take, however, was good. We listened back to it and were cracking ourselves up.

We pressed on, trying and succeeding in remembering the words and structure to "Army Issue Eggplant Eyes", a high quality song it had always bugged me we hadn't recorded yet. With only a small vocal overdub at the bridge section, the live recording of guitar and two vocals is very enjoyable and will likely be "the take".

After this success, we considered the astonishingly old yet high quality and never recorded originals "Boots", "River Sticks", and "Michaelangelo" but ultimately went with the more recent Kaptain Karl composition "Car of Jonas", which we could easily remember all of without any time consuming research into the archives. I recorded acoustic guitar while Karl sang his lead vocal. The second complete take was good. We considered breaking for lunch, but decided against it, as things were going extremely well. We had done basic tracks for four songs in about two hours. We were quickly agreeing to each others' arrangement suggestions and tightening up certain things but leaving the overall vibe very spontaneous and loose.

I overdubbed my brief vocal to "Car of Jonas" then I put bass on "Car" and "Conversation". "Car"'s bass makes it sound somewhat like Evan Johnson's "Moments, Days, and Ages", on which I also played bass. I wasn't sure if bass would work on "Conversation", but I tried it and we both liked it, although it's just augmentation and reinforcement of the acoustic guitar, not flashy melodic stuff. I don't think bass is appropriate or necessary for "Army Issue", although some light percussion and possibly a shimmering, chorusy electric guitar may be added later. That song had some of the improvisational acoustic guitar/harmonica interplay I enjoyed creating on the old man will travel album.

Finally, we went back to "Bass Guitar" (for which Karl is going to create and record a bass part on his own) and finished the lead vocals and arranged some backing vocals. We sang backup on each others' verses. It was pretty sweet and we had a lot of fun and laughs.

Add to this the tracks I've started at my studio over the last few years - "Cricket", "Iceland (Reykjavik Revels)", and "The Sequel To Behind The Curtain (Now That I Know (What's Back There))" to name three, and we've got the beginnings of a pretty decent GUH CD of all original material. I am going to lobby for inclusion of "Introducing the Door" and "Stop, Drop, and Roll", but that may be a tough sell, as I think Karl thinks of those as Karl solo songs. Maybe, like "The Children", they could appear on GUH and KK CDs. Or maybe I can just play backup on the versions that go on his CDs. Yeah, that might be better.

At any rate, a super day and one of our most successful ever in a recording studio. I think the next disc will be a combination of the polish of Generic Mayhem and the spontanaeity and improvisational room that made old man will travel special.

notes:
A)Possible titles for the album include, but are not limited to:

Opossum
Corsica
Luck

B)Confused by the headline? I'll break it down for you:
1. Synthesis - originally released in 1993 on cassette only. Digital remixing and remastering awaiting retrieval by the band of original 1/2 inch reel to reel four track session tape of "Smilin' Joe" from Scot Ninnemann's mom's basement.
2. Anybody Seen My Wallet? - abandoned cassette four track recordings. Technical problems assure material not likely to be heard in this form. Most but not all of the tracks were rerecorded later and better on...
3. old man will travel - released on CD and cassette
4. Generic Mayhem - CD only
5. Generic Mayhem Live - signed, numbered limited edition promotional CD given away with the first 20 copies of #4.
6. Fall - currently held up by difficulty (and some laziness and cheapness) obtaining rights to release cover songs.
7. The new one documented above.

On a trip recently, we passed a sign for a town in Iowa called "Swaledale". I told my friend they should start a brewery there. When she asked why I said so they could brew

Swaledale Pale Ale

Then I thought how awful it would be if that particular brew went bad. You would have

Stale Swaledale Pale Ale

And what if the reason the brew had gone bad was that the U.S. Postal Service had taken too long getting it to its destination? Then you would have

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale

But what if you had a great story about serving it one time only to find out it had gone bad? Then you would have a

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale Tale

And what if a musician heard your story and was inspired to create a boisterous song? Then you would have a

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale Tale Wail

It would be sad if the musician was playing a show and that song didn't go over well, because you would hate to see the

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale Tale Wail Fail

Although it would all be worth it if the musician left music and started a business with trains and train tracks and made a ton of money running the company that would of course be named after the incident that caused him to switch careers, which is to say the company would be called the

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale Tale Wail Fail Rail

Then years later the historic "golden spike" that was the last component of the main line of the main train would be in a museum labeled as the

Snail Mail Stale Swaledale Pale Ale Tale Wail Fail Rail Nail

Feel free to continue this nonsense in the comments if you dare.

Inspiration

I was going to the library to return some books and get some new ones. I put on 89.3 the Current, which I almost always enjoy. Its only real competition is 88.5 Jazz 88. The Current was playing Neil Young's electric version of "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)". The electrics were spitting and snarling with the heaviest guitar sound ever recorded. I've always loved that song and I hadn't heard it in a long time. He sang

It's out of the blue and into the black
They give you this, but you pay for that
And once you're gone you can never come back
When you're out of the blue, and into the black

A long time ago on a beach in Ohio I was sitting with my sister looking at the lake. We had been silent for a while and she asked me what I was thinking. It was shortly after "Freedom" had come out and Neil Young was popular and in vogue again. I said I had been thinking that if I bought some Neil Young and listened to it I bet I would really like it. My sister thought that was very funny and indeed it was. With great affection and appreciation, she said, "That's really what goes on in your mind, isn't it? You were just sitting there, looking at the sand and the water and the sky and you were thinking, 'I bet I would really like Neil Young's music if I bought some of his albums.' That's great." We laughed because it's true.

As I drove on, Neil Young sang

"The King is gone, but he's not forgotten."

I thought about Elvis and how much his music has meant to me. I thought about all the songs I've played that are either about or inspired by Elvis. "Dream I Had Last Night", "California" and Karl's trilogy of songs. I thought about that time long ago on a beach. I thought about all the music I've made that I'm often tempted to just give up on. I sometimes see no reason to do anything but let it rot in the basement. Sometimes it just feels like a nuisiance to even be a musician. Nothing else makes me as happy as being a musician. I often wish I was happy being something that made money, helped my family, and made sense instead of something that requires money, takes time away from my family, and occupies my mind with senselessness.

I drove by a church. The church often has a funny saying on its lit up sign rising out of the ground by the road. I thought about Elvis. On the radio Neil Young again sang "The King is gone, but he's not forgotten" The sign on the church said

FINISH HIS WORK

GUH Fall CD Progress Report

I am trying to find out how to obtain licenses to legitimately release the cover songs on our CD. I've looked at

1. ascap.com. I think four of the tunes are licensed from there and it had publisher contact information on four of the songs.

2. bmi.com. Representatives of Lou Reed, TMBG, R.E.M., Billy Bragg. Site was fairly useless, except for its link to...

3. harryfox.com. All but Sweet Child are represented by the harry fox agency and we can obtain mechanical licenses in 24 hours online. Here's the catch - they only do licenses for 500-2500 copies of CDs. We can get the right to print (up to) 500 CDs for $400, not including Sweet Child. We are likely only going to print 50 or so, as we are not technically a terribly "popular" music group.

I'm thinking that even though it will take longer I will try to get conact information for the songs' individual publishers and write, call, or e-mail them explaining the situation. I have addresses or phone #s for four of them already. I am hopeful that process will not take a terribly long time and may result in some or all of them saying, "just go ahead." or "just send us a check for 15 bucks." So that's where that's at.

I didn't go to Memphis South, our graphics preparation haven, because of the snow today, so no further artwork progress. I'm going to take a picture of the rock garden where the heads were, which is now 2 feet deep in snow. I will now call the photo series "Après L'Automne, L'Hiver". Assuming we go with a clear tray, there will be a very generous 6 (six) high quality artistic photos included with the disc at no extra charge. I will also be previewing these on the web at the earliest opportunity.

It's after midnight now and I'm too tired to continue. Inspired by Chazz Vader's blog, I was going to put up a bunch of stuff about setting goals, finishing this CD and thinking about other future CDs, promotion, promotion of songs, etc. But it's simply too late. This is an interesting quest, as production of a CD always seems to be. One of these years perhaps I will get the whole process down to a science and release like ten CDs all in the space of a few months. That would be sweet. The music is all there and mostly even good!

p.s. Recording on Great Uncle Helmer's next original music CD will continue at Mandimae in Deer Park on April 1 with the latest composition from the band, Bass Guitar, being the only currently targeted composition. Now I have actually fallen asleep and am only typing with general momentum. Zzzzzzz...

Fall (GUH Covers CD) Update

Good news. I got a very professional looking "p in a circle" font from this British guy. It has 26 ps in a circle for matching several fonts. I sent him $5 for "drinking money" and lo and behold it was legit. If only a bar code series was so cheap.

One more visit to the Memphis Evans graphics wizard and we will have finished the artwork. The ceramic and paper maiche heads are dazed but unharmed after being
1. placed in a bed of leaves and given "headstones" (pun intended - back of booklet),
2. camouflaged in a rock garden (inner booklet spread) and
3. cuddling up to whisper secrets to one another in a fallen tree trunk (front (wide angle) and back (close up) covers).

I have put "call Brad Cassetto" (the guy who mastered Generic Mayhem) on the refrigerator whiteboard and in the "home love opportunities" binder, which means it will likely get done, possibly as early as today or tomorrow. I have located the necessary Karl Kreated Data CD dated 12/11/04 featuring the 24 bit stereo masters for the 8 songs. These represent our second and, I hope, final round of mixing.

Depending on Brad's schedule, the April 21 show has a small outside chance at being a CD release party. Assuming, of course that I get the finished master, listen to it at home, and fall immediately in love with it, which always happens. Ha, ha. Is all this activity happening because I happen to have had two caffeinated drinks every day for the last three days?

It makes perfect, perverse sense to me that the photos for a Great Uncle Helmer CD entitled "Fall" should be taken on a sunny morning in the middle of March using washed out leaves that have been through the freeze and thaw cycle several times. Thank goodness my wife had a tremendous pile of them covering her garden.

If you are confused and did not realize that Great Uncle Helmer had recorded a covers CD, you can get the back story for this episode of the Memphis blog right here. That currently extremely minimal site will be updated this week as much as baby naps allow. I would like for it to eventually include the following:
1. An essay and/or fake interviews about the CD by me and another by Karl, probably about what the songs mean to us, how we came to learn them, etc.
2. Complete information about the songs' original authors/performers
3. Information on obtaining the right to release someone else's songs on a CD similar to the information we provided in lieu of lyrics for I in the Sky from Generic Mayhem.
4. A link to purchasing information (once the CD is done).

Fascinating p.s.: When I spell checked this document using blogger's own spell checker, it did not recognize the word "blog".

Post Oscar Haze

I really liked Syriana and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which were about the only two movies I saw in the theater last year. Obviously I went to them for vastly different reasons and had different expectations and both exceeded my expectations. I think the academy could definitely loosen up and reconnect with more popular, fun, humorous movies. Either that or they should just be up front and change the award name to "Best Dramatic Picture" or even "Best Dramatic Unpopular Picture".

Crash I saw kind of by accident on DVD and wasn't expecting much, but it was quite good. Best picutre? Maybe, but I didn't see enough of them to know. Didn't see "Brokeback" and was never interested. My wife asked me why not. I asked my wife if she would be interested if it were two women. She said no, probably not. I am glad a "gay themed" story got so much attention and I will be so much more proud of our country when gay people are allowed to marry each other. However, I don't like the lead actors that much and I don't really want to see them make out.

Movies are not nearly so important as they were a few years ago and my expectations for a theater experience are extremely low. I avioded seeing "Match Point" in the theater because I like Woody Allen and Scarlet Johanssen so much I would hate for the movie to be ruined by some losers. "Gosford Park" and "The Two Towers" both were completely ruined for me by idiotic discussion and laughter happening around me. But "Match Point" is already in my netflix queue.

The last truly great, magical, communal theater experiences I had were "About Schmidt" at the Uptown and "Vanilla Sky" at Grandview. What was that, five years ago? I've given up on it.

As far as "deserving" awards goes, John Stewart (who I thought was a great host) summarized the Oscars (and all the other "major" awards) when he said, "Martin Scorcese, zero oscars, 3-6 Mafia, one". The "deserving" are not rewarded. Take the grammys (please!) and Elvis. Elvis won two grammys - both for the song "How Great Thou Art". Elvis in the 1950s? Bob Dylan in the 1960s? Zero grammys. Indefinsible.

Meme Part II: Seven Other Gangs of Four
Warning: certain Meme sections resulted in bonus tracks of thought (btot) listed separately.

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. Garden State. I haven't tested this theory, but when I saw it in the theater I really enjoyed it and it just seemed so mellow and it struck me that it would be a movie one could watch over and over.
2. Star Wars. duh.
3. The Empire Strikes Back. see (2.)
4. The Usual Suspects. The complexity and twists of the plots and characters make this a movie I had to see at least twice.

btot: If you said "What about Return of the Jedi" I say to you "I hear you and accept you, but it's just not that good, especially the DVD version with the alterations that give new meaning to the word 'craptastic', which word had a pretty clear meaning to begin with."

If you said "What about 1999-2005 Star Wars trilogy?" I say to you "Jar Jar step in Poo Poo!"

I also want to mention Python's Holy Grail, Amadeus, and Lone Star – all movies I love, but am not sure I could watch over and over.

Four places I have lived
1. Mellby 324. St. Olaf College. 1993-94. I got a single room on a quiet floor my senior year. Then I turned it into a mini recording studio, much to the annoyance of my neighbors. I am sorry about that, but I had to do it. Please forgive me and contact me if you would like a free copy of the CD I made from those recordings.
2. Fairport, NY. August 1975-August 1986. A suburb of Rochester where we knew all our neighbors and there were a ton of other kids to play with. It was great.
3. Silver Spring, MD. August 1986-September 1990. See (2.) substitute D.C. for Rochester. Home of rock band Suburban Decay.
4. Northfield, MN. September 1990-May 2003. Home of acoustic duo Great Uncle Helmer. Three room, third floor, numerically aligned and satisfyingly large apartment housed fairly elaborate and well-equipped digital recording studio for final six or seven years. Saw successful recordings by Great Uncle Helmer, Jubilant Dogs, Doc's Kids, Evan Johnson, Siobhan Meehl, Eric Rohn, and others.

Four TV shows I love
1. Angel. Especially season five with Spike.
2. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Especially season two with Angel going evil.
3. Seinfeld. There can be no debate that this is the best sitcom ever. Only possible challenger Curb Your Enthusiasm.
4. The X-Files. Sorry, Moonlighting. Mulder and Scully stayed good longer.

Four places I’ve vacationed
1. Ibiza, Spain. May 2003. Sweeeeet. Honeymoon of a lifetime. The food, the myriad swimsuit optional beaches, the mini-golf on wildly unpredictable concrete. Plus - honeymoon. Sweeeeet.
2. Iasi/Codaesti, Romania. October/November 2000. Working in a clinic for children whose parents could not afford to care for them. Totally different but equally satisfying to (1.).
3. Virginia Beach. (A few times, including September 1997) Nice house on the beach. Bodysurfing, saltwater, family, seafood, seagulls, snapshots, tennis, journal writing, playing cards, mini-golf. Very relaxing. The vacation you think of when someone says "vacation". Excellent.
4. Excalibur Hotel, Las Vegas. July 2005. May it Viva forever. What an exciting town. Once you find a cheap source of gatorade, that is. We were also blessed with a terrific native friend to guide us to the best places to go.

btot: I feel I must break the rules and mention my favorite other vacations ever so briefly – Colorado Springs (3x), Hawaii, Madden's Resort in Brainerd, MN, California (3x). These "eight of four" were not necessarily listed in order of quality of vacation. Plus various road trips to Kansas City, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Dells have been pretty great. And the many enjoyable vacations I took primarily to visit people are not listed at all.

Four of my favorite dishes
1. Pizza. duh.
2. Mock Duck Pad Thai.
3. Anything my wife makes for me
4. Anything my family makes for me

Four sites I visit daily
1. Yahoo! (news & e-mail)
2. Amazon (CDs)
3. Blog by Chazz Vader: http://chazzvader.blogspot.com/
4. Blog by Prosecutor/Mommy: http://prosecution.blogspot.com/

Four places I would rather be right now
1. In a recording studio where I have all the time and money in the world, several clones of myself, Kent, Andy, Dave, Stu, Karl, Justin, Ben, etc., and a sympathetic, knowledgeable producer (Scot?).
2. See also vacations listed above.
3. Visiting family.
4. Near interesting people – people I know but also maybe people I don't. Is "near Paul McCartney" a legit answer to this one? I think so.

btot: Where I am at any given time usually ranks from acceptable to excellent since leaving the banking world.

Meme Part I: Four Jobs

1. Full Time Dad. Best job ever. Highly motivated to succeed. Benefits too numerous to mention. Large challenges, but I enjoy meeting them and finding creative ways for Baby and I to rise above.

2. Bank Teller/Lead Teller. This job was almost completely not primarily about what I thought it would be about. I'd always liked sorting baseball cards and other such obsessive/compulsive activities. I thought I'd be great at it because I thought it would be a lot of keeping track of pieces of paper, numbers, and working on a computer. And I was great at that.

The thing I didn't know it would be about was SALES. I don't know why anyone would go to a bank teller these days when everything is available online or at the ATM. But people do, and when people do, they are supposed to be offered a new banking product or service EVERY TIME they do. That is the official policy of my bank and prior employer. And what surprised me was that I was also really great at that.

I studied the various products and services the bank offered – who knew there were so many and such variety? And most of the people who came to the bank could have saved time, made more money, and paid fewer fees with new or alternative bank products, so suggesting these things to them based on my extensive product knowledge was good for everybody. I made about 15-20% more money than my regular wage and won trips for two to Hawaii, Colorado Springs, and Madden's resort in Brainerd. And for every septuagenarian who was annoyed at being offered online banking or an ATM card for the 3,000th time (and, btw, I have no sympathy) there was at least one person who ended up saving hundreds of dollars in fees they didn't have to be paying.

Still, the whole time I felt like "Why the hell am I (just) a bank teller?" The job didn't pay that much, and while I was really, really good at it, it didn't really play to my skill set or use my education. In fact, one of my coworkers, when we were talking about our backgrounds and I mentioned my college degree and revealed my relatively advanced age said something like, "Don't take this the wrong way, but why are you working here?"

I thought to myself, "A lifetime of truly colossal underachievement and breathtakingly poor decision making." I actually said something about being burnt out on guitar teaching and wanting to earn more money, which was also true. Still, the general public, at least that somewhat deficient cross section of the general public that still uses actual live bank tellers, often uses them as venting targets for deep seeded "my mommy never loved me" style oedipal rage. I now hate the general public. When I got the call at work that my wife was in labor and my daughter was being born, I walked out the door knowing I would not miss the industry in the slightest and I haven't.

3. Guitar teacher
This was intermittently an extremely rewarding job. There was about a three-year learning curve for me during which I learned to a) teach fast or slow according to a student's background and ability to learn and b) charge people when they skipped a lesson. After that I had my part down and it all depended on the skills, habits, ability and desire of the students. I had some great ones who went on to make their own music they shared with me and I feel very proud of them.

I also had some complete duds, but the fact that I was a complete dud as a teenage piano and voice student then went on to enjoy making music more than anything else in life is encouraging to me. The money was inconsistent, however, and I did get burnt out after nine years so was not too sad to leave. I enjoy music more when I'm not teaching it – especially teaching theory, which a person should learn thoroughly, teach for a while to fully internalize, then actively, consciously forget and just get on with it. Still, I may go back to this someday.

4. Camp counselor
This job was a lot of fun, as I loved the kids and I am basically just "the world's tallest nine year old" as my friend Evan once called me. The drag was the bosses. I can't remember exactly why or what precise stupid things they would say, do, and suggest. I did it for two summers and have a lot of good memories. This was the worst paying job of the three paying jobs I mention here. At the Christian Church camp I think I made about $15 a day – which was because I was working for the Lord. Uh-huh. Amen. The following year at the YMCA I made $5/hr. There are a ton of stories from these two years – more than I have time to go in to here.

I got the idea for this blog entry from a blog by a friend of mine. Check her out if you want. Maybe I will finish the rest another time. Hope that was interesting to someone. Meffis out.

I'm not sure when any of my songs will be on iTunes. That would be neat. I may have to look into that. For now, though, you can look at a brand new mini-site devoted to the "For You (Greatest Hits Vol. 2)" album here.

I just shoved a microphone cable through a hole in the baseboard of my living room and ran the end of it down into my studio. There is a piano in my living room right next to the hole. The drill died before I could widen the hole enough to accomodate shoving another back end of a mic cable through with the one cable already in there. (Plus the cable for cable, the original purpose of the hole) It now seems possible or even probable that I will soon have stereo recording of a wonderfully bright, in-tune piano available to me. If this works it will allow me to record to their fullest potential the following songs (roughly in order of priority):

Electric Light
Eddie Gee
Million Dollar Idea
Brute Waltz
The Imaginary Cat (GUH)

I don't know why I didn't do this right after we moved in two plus years ago. Because I am a lazy underacheiver I guess. Now I will just wait for the drill to charge overnight then this weekend I can finish the job.

In related news, Electric Light and Eddie Gee are slated to be part of a greatest hits volume 2 (1997-2005) collection tentatively called "For You". Tentative song list is:

1. My Name Is Paul (w/real drums, new vocal, 2nd bridge) (Pop Machine)
2. Ron Cey (possibly w/real organ replacing keyboard/saxophone fills) (Pop Machine)
3. Play (Towering Columns of Sunshine)
4. Emerson Avenue (Pop Machine)
5. Here (Love Songs)
6. One House (Bubba)
7. Eddie Gee (Towering Columns of Sunshine)
8. Bittersweet Love Song (live version)
9. My Baby's Home (Love Songs)
10. Wave 61 (Nothing Personal)
11. One More Day (Pop Machine)
12. Swqeatshirt (live version)
13. Fresno (Bubba)
14. Electric Light (featuring Kimbatina) (Bubba)
15. Milestone Motel (edit) (Little Stranger)
16. End of the Skies (w/ 2 new verses) (Bubba)
17. Time In The Middle (Bubba)

The first greatest hits collection was called Bullet Collection and was distributed on cassette. A remastered version may yet appear with the following (slightly revised) tracklist:

1. Slush (new version)
2. Someday (They Ain't Tires)
3. Pelican Man (Ringin' Far And Wide)
4. Child's Hallucination (Mellby 324)
5. Ark of the Covenant (Joe Rain & The Deserts)
6. the blame (Joe Rain & The Deserts)
7. Grudge (Last of the Pink Lemonade)
8. But Not In May! (They Ain't Tires)
9. Winter Ghost (Mellby 324)
10. Joe Rain & The Deserts (new version)
11. (Today I Don't Mind Living in a) Small Town (new version featuring Pete Rivard)
12. Farmer's Song (Suburban Decay)
13. I Wish I Had Kissed You Tonight (Springbrook Young)
14. Rio Grande (They Ain't Tires)
15. Nothing I Can Do (Ringin' Far And Wide)
16. Bullet Collection (Joe Rain & The Deserts)
17. Dream I Had Last Night (Love Songs)

I had a great show with Kaptain Karl last Saturday night at the Eden Prairie Dunn Bros. We had a fun rehearsal a few days before and polished up some of our favorite songs from our first CD. "Inkwell", "Behind the Curtain", and "Oh, No" all received very enjoyable performances. Weird that all those songs are now about 10 years old. Also did some Simon & Garfunkel and I had forgotten arrangements of who sang what, but we did ok.

Show was so enjoyable I started recording "Cricket", our best co-written relatively young (last three years) song. Had all afternoon and evening yesterday and am working on it more this morning before going in to work at 11:45. So far has rhythm and lead electric guitars, bass, and my vocal. It's sort of a sequel to "The Children" from Art Is A Lie, Baby and Generic Mayhem. When it finally makes it to a CD, it will be Great Uncle Helmer's fifth album.

1. Synthesis (cassette only so far)
2. old man will travel
3. Generic Mayhem
4. Fall (mastering/artwork yet to be completed)
5. as-yet-untitled-featuring-"Cricket", "Iceland", "The Sequel to Behind The Curtain (Now That I Know What's Back There)"

Sixth if you count the truncated "Anybody Seen My Wallet" project, from which otherwise unrecorded material may someday be mixed, mastered, and released. So I felt excited about that and am going to go to play at the Freighthouse Dunn Bros. with Karl tonight from 8-10 p.m. Hooray.

I played a very enjoyable show with Karl last night at the Linden Hills Dunn Bros. Coffee in South Minneapolis. We rehearsed Wednesday night and were very "on", focusing on our favorite original songs. We also got together several hours early on Saturday and practiced a few other things. The version of "Cricket" from last night's show was the best ever, as were versions of several other songs. I was very happy with how together Karl and I were on both vocals and guitars (and mandolins, etc.)

The show also featured the performance debut of three excelent new songs. "Car of Jonas", written by Karl about a very sad man, is reminiscient in its poigniancy of KFC Hell. My best most accessible song in years, "Electric Light", received a perfect reading by newcomer Kimbatina with some nice Mandolin from Karl. Plus a song I introduced as "Slump Buster" since it is the first original piece of music from Andy Honigman in about 10 years. Unfortunately the performance of that was not as successful, but it will be both in future GUH shows and in Honigman shows, such as Art-A-Whirl on May 15. Thanks to all who showed up and had fun with us and thanks Karl for being awesome.