Try Ruby
The coolest and most useful programming tutorial I've seen so far.
The coolest and most useful programming tutorial I've seen so far.
I'm testing out this new comment notification system that will supposedly email me when people leave comments, with the aim of making this website (that's getting a tiny bit of action now) a little more conversationally interesting. Would you mind leaving a comment down there? And if there's already one there, would you engage that person in some banter? Supposedly they'll get email, too, unless they untick the “notify me” box.
I appreciate it. By the way, I don't think it's working and I've been debugging it all day. But maybe it just needs a new post to work. I dunno. Drupal's tricky.
Edit: It's working now. Thanks.
I just realized this weekend that I missed something in Friday's post. * Nershi's announcement. * Ben's announcement. * Zac Matthew's announcement. * And mine.
So, if you haven't already, take a look at the dates, and allow me to prepare a meditation on why November seems to be such a drag for touring bands...
Surprise! I'm a cliche! All of these announcements were dated sometime in November – Billy in '06, Ben in '07, Zac in '08, and myself in '09. I already asked, what is it about November that makes one of us flip out and quit our band each year? Well, obviously, all of these bands are summertime festival circuit bands. That was RRE's bread and butter, sort of like the hippy band equivalent of Black Friday. Remaining closed on Black Friday is not an option for most retail businesses, just as not hitting the road each summer is not an option for a band that also wishes to remain a viable business. So, how does that end up laying out your touring year? We'll start in the spring...
Spring tour is great. People have been bottled up all winter and are ready to party. You've had all winter to get creative (or not) and hopefully have a boatload of new tunes ready for your crowd. These are all club dates since festival season hasn't begun yet, and usually they are packed with a fired up crowd. You deliver. Your job is the best one on earth. March, April, May.
Festival Season! It usually starts some time in April for most of us, though if you're lucky enough to be on the Judy's fav list you might get to start early at SpringFest. The majority of your summer is spent doing what's called “routing”, which means getting from good gig to good gig. Hopefully, those good gigs are every weekend and Tuesday night is paying for the gas between Fridays, but if not, and your next gig is on an opposite coast, then you might be playing some of the dreaded “routing dates”. These are the gigs in Winters, CA on the Wednesday before High Sierra Music Festival, or the Bottleneck in Lawrence, KS before or after Wakarusa. They're rough, not only because you get yanked from festival land back to club reality, but because the vast majority of the live band audience isn't really interested in going to the Bottleneck in the middle of summer. Club owners don't have the option of shutting their club for the whole summer, and some scenes probably do a really good business in clubs in the summer, but ours ain't one of them. File under : necessary evil. It's cool, though. On weekends you're a rockstar.
Now it's fall. You've already been on the road for half the year. September might throw you a festival bone or two, but mostly it's back to the clubs. The edge has come off of what were fresh tunes and a fired up crowd. It's time to start laying out plans for the winter. You need to write a new record, but you also need to keep the business going, so it's a constant push and pull. Oh, you're on the road while you're deciding all of this so usually you're too tired to really be able to puzzle out the correct combination of dates that will keep the business far enough above water to enable you to do what you really want to do, and that's be home with your family and write some new music. Your crowd will be there, and they will be expecting you to prove your otherworldly talent by delivering them fresh new tunes, preferably originals but whatever they want at the time will be fine. Do not disappoint, my friends.
So you walk the line, and don't line up a winters full of shows so that you can get creative. The problem? You've been on the road for so long by this point in the year that you don't remember how to write music. Better line up some shows for February, since payroll is running out...
Wash, rinse, repeat for at least 7 years and what you have is a subconscious dread of winter.
I was just thinking this morning about what a hilarious and glaring anachronism the term “record label” actually is. The “record” as a popular medium for musical commerce was essentially replaced by the CD when I was about 5 years old. There haven't been “labels” on popularly consumed music nor have they been sold in “record” form in approximately 25 years. Yet mavins of popular culture wonder “what will become of the record label system?” When will they finally embrace the digital model (or a digital model)? Will they just continue to sue copyright infringers until it's no longer profitable to do so? How long has it honestly been since record labels even bothered with the pretense of being purveyors of culture, anyway?
A buddy of mine forwarded me a link to a nicely written piece on the stages of music business decline that we've all witnessed over the last ten years. Recommended reading.
So, let's remove the rose colored glasses that I had on for the trip down memory lane that was my post on the valuable service that record labels once provided to American culture. Let's talk about the flipside of the equation. It's been a long time coming, and is something I've been meaning to get to sooner. There are many reasons I'm leaving RRE at this time. The fact that of the impending record contract which would obligate me for the next several years is only part of the story from my end. One of the other parts is that I'd feel kind of like a D-bag for signing a record label contract on the one hand while doing everything in my power to kick the legs out from under the entire faltering system on the other. Make no mistake about it – I think that the record label system and most of the folks who have made a living in the record business for the last 50 years deserve everything that they are reaping right now. They used to provide a service over which they had a monopoly – the recording and distribution of recorded works. There was no practical way around the fact of recording and distribution for an artist in the age when physical media were the only media.
This monopoly was supported on all sides by a conglomeration of other media companies – print publications, radio stations, television studios – whose sole purpose was to make and promote product that made money for all. The cultural side effects were a bonus as far as shareholders was concerned (if they were concerned at all). However, all of these media outlets now find themselves in the exact same position of irrelevance. The tremendous and spectacular downfall of the recording industry was only a prelude to what's to come for all the rest of these companies – witness the Boston Globe, or NBC, or any of the awful top 40 Clear Channel radio stations out there whose ad revenues are dwindling in the face of the coming storm. Don't even get me started on TicketBastard and their “convenience” charge. Go ahead and merge with LiveNation, you're only hastening and enlarging your own downfall. It will come.
For the last ten years there's been no practical justification for that model to remain in existence save for the folks in charge are familiar with it, that's how it's always been, and that's how it is. They will all be dead soon enough, though. Our musical and cultural heritage will not, however. So it is up to us to figure out the path toward self-sufficiency in the cultural arts. Here's my high-falutin' theory –>
If what burned the old way to the ground was 1s and 0s, then what shall rise from the ashes and light the way forward for us all shall also be 1s and 0s. This obviously means the internet. Where other efforts to cram the old model into the new era have failed, ours shall succeed. Where the old models existed for the enrichment of a very few in the business, the new model shall succeed in creating a sustainable livelihood for those of us who create art, who create cultural value, and who share our artistic wealth in the interest of enriching the lives of others as well as ourselves.
Record labels and middlemen of all stripes be warned. I'm coming for you.
We met last October at the taping of the “Woodsongs Radio Hour” in Louisville, Kentucky. It was the one where Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile were there, also. They did the show after ours? Anyway, I just wanted to tell you something...
I spent the better part of my college years listening to a lot of MMW. I actually had to willfully cut myself off because I was absorbing a bit too much of Chris' style, in my youthful opinion. I hadn't really listened to much in the several years since then, but it was still a bit of an intimidating treat to be on the set of this nationally syndicated radio show with Chris Wood and Edgar Meyer. My bass teacher in college used to drag us to master classes down in Hickory NC, and Edgar's was one of them. It was mindblowing, but I digress. I went out and bought your album, Loaded, the day after the taping.
The point I'm getting at is that we, as professional musicians, have been taught through many generations of unfortunate Pavlovian training to view the worth of our art through the lens of commerce. How many units we sell is how good our record is. Of course, we know that we're creating art and that the value of our work can't be quantified as simply and as greedily as that, but if your record doesn't move that many units, it's harder to stay excited about it as a work of art, isn't it? It's certainly harder to keep our record label excited about it. That fact is quite likely the fundamental cause of the mess that we find our “industry” in, wouldn't you say? That it's an industry at all is part of the problem. Irony.
So, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, in public, what a profoundly great record it is. It's moved me to tears more times than I can count, and almost every song on there has at one point or another perfectly summed it all up for me. I haven't heard music as good since probably the first time I ever heard Gillian Welch. I'm not sure how many units it's sold, maybe “not many”, but it's one of the finest albums I've ever heard. So, thank you.
I thought I'd take this quiet opportunity to try and recall some of the thoughts that have been bouncing around my head the last few weeks. I was thinking about all the various manners in which many of the bands that I've known have experienced or dealt with personnel changes. I believe there to be a spectrum, and my departure from RRE seems to fall somewhere in the middle.
On the one side you have the “okay, bye” method, most notably employed by my friend Zac Matthews, formerly of Hot Buttered Rum. (Funny, his was a November announcement as well. What is it about impending winter that runs roughshod over summertime festival bands? Rhetorical question.) Obviously this approach has it's pros and cons. The most obvious con is the sense of a lack of closure that the public can feel when one day everything is cool and the next their favorite band is no longer what it was. I know I felt something of a shock when Ben quit Tea Leaf or when John-O split SCI. You want to know “why?” Usually you are disappointed. The pro (singular) of doing it like this would presumably be that relations within the band have deteriorated to such a degree by this point that dragging it out over a farewell tour would not be a good thing at all for anyone. I'm glad that's not the case here.
Then there's the other end of the spectrum, most notably employed by Bill Nershi of String Cheese Incident. I'm not going to rehash the reasons for his splitting, mostly because I'm afraid he might be reading this. Instead, I'm going to guess at them. Bill was the frontman of a huge operation. They weren't just a band at the point when he had to call it, and hadn't been for many years. As much as I look up to their operation, and the operation of Phish or even Umphrey's McGee as a band whose business model seems sound from my perspective, I can understand the pressure of finding yourself in that position of success. Let's face it, most musicians don't become musicians because they like running companies, yet the more successful your band becomes the more of your time the business syphons off. The less time you have to make music. The less time you have to contemplate taking a break since the rest of the operation doesn't go on holiday just because you do. I think this played a big part in Phish's hiatus, aside from the much publicized substance issues. The business of being in a band can be a major grind. I digress...
This approach also has it's pros and it's cons. The most notable pro is that you can actually set it up in a very lucrative business-like manner for your last tour to be a “farewell” one. I'm not sure how much $ SCI made on that summer 07 tour, but they didn't play another gig until summer 09, so it must've been okay. The fans of the band get to relish a last hoorah, and the band members themselves get to say goodbye to a lifestyle as well as some of the locales that have become home out there, if only for a little while. The cons of this approach are relatively minor, mostly having to do with people continually asking “so what are you gonna be doing next?” It's a natural question, but you might not always have an answer ready.
Where I fall is somewhere in between. I wouldn't quit this band if I were less than ready. As I may have said to some of you, this decision took me years to come to, but on the other hand I've known for years that it was coming. Sometimes when I walk into a room full of hobos I get this feeling like everyone is looking at me, like I'm a dead man walking. And to be perfectly honest, I haven't had a ready made answer for what kind of music my band plays for the last seven years, so obviously I don't have a ready made answer to “what are you doing next?” Well, I'm gonna be programming. You see this website? I'm gonna make a living off of it one day.
The pros – I get to say goodbye.
The cons – sometimes I'm tired of saying goodbye.
I had a great blog post going in my head while I was cooking dinner, and now that I have time to write it all down, I'm too tired. It's been a long day. We woke up without power this morning, which happens way too often in Stillwater. No power means no heat and no water, since we're on a well and our pump is probably as old as I am. So I got out of bed, lit a fire in the fireplace, lit the burner on the stove and got to making pancakes. We were out most of the day, hence my tiredness. Made an awesome black bean soup for dinner. Not your typical black bean, but more of a Cuban influenced recipe that calls for a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. It's awesome. Maybe I'll start a recipes section on this site, which will be fully searchable as soon as I figure out Apache SOLR...
So anyway, today's tech discoveries. First of all, Google Chrome for Mac was finally released yesterday. It's not bad. The thing with browsers now is that there is NO user loyalty, at least not with me. Think back to the good old days when you didn't know there was a thing such as a browser. IE was the internet. I felt like I was cheating the day I went and downloaded Firefox, even though I was telling myself that I was merely subverting the paradigm or something like that. I stuck with FF for a few years, for at least a month into my Mac-hood. Then one day a weird thing happened (I don't remember what), and the advice I got was to try a different browser. Opera was the one that was advised to make this broken site work, but Camino was the one that I was told was “generally the best Mac browser”. So within a month I'd skipped out on MS completely, and had gone and stabbed my open source friends at Mozilla square in the back. I mean, sure, Camino is a Mozilla product, but I'm sure they knew where this was headed. Safari 4. JavaScript rendering so fast that it makes you actually say “wow”. And when your main email client is GMail, which is nothing but a mountain of JS (or AJAX if you wanna get particular), you start to notice such things. That was only 6 months ago or so. Now I'm typing this post up in Chrome. God knows where this ends. I'll probably join some open source project one of these days.
Discovery #2. JQuery Lightbox. I can already tell that it's going to be derided as overused, but DAMN it's sweet. Click on my “Contact” menu link up there. That superfly effect that superimposes the form over the screen? Seems kinda familiar, right? That's JQuery in action. Sweet.
Tomorrow, or sometime this weekend, I promise you a post on quitting a band, and the many ways in which it can go down as well as a state of my noggin report.
thanks, all...
Well, this blog has hit version 3.0, with today's torturous migration from WordPress to Drupal. Why put myself through such an ordeal? Because if I'm going to paint my masterpiece, I'm going to have to start butchering some canvasses, and Drupal seems to beg for me to hack away at it. That and there is a world of flexibility in this platform that doesn't really exist in WP.
It'll be a process of getting up to speed and making this look and feel and act as nicely as the old iBD, but once I get going, expect some actual development here.
Thanks, friends. Oh, and in case you were wondering what happening to all of RRE's web properties today, I don't know anything about it...
I'd said earlier that I'd use this blog as a tool to try and explain the process that I'm going through so as to hopefully help some of you understand what has led me to this decision (to quit my awesome band).
I'm changing my mind.
Most of what I'm feeling and doing and going through at this point is way too personal and, the existence of this blog notwithstanding, I'm kind of a private person.
Edit: what I mean is that I'm going write about whatever is on my mind, just like I've always done. I've felt something of a mental block since I made my pronouncement on the purpose of this blog. I didn't really feel like talking about what a wreck I was after the last CO show, or how Vince Guaraldi set me off Sunday afternoon after Stroudsburg. It's my bidness, and there's not really much to say about it. So, I'm just going to resume writing about whatever...