Is That All There Is

Now, who wrote that song? I'm listening to PJ sing it, the verse about the circus, which follows the verse about the House Fire... Who else does this song? It sounds heavily edited on this recorder version I'm listening to right now... It's from the album she made with john parrish. I wonder if she made this record after she separated from mr. cave.
Interestingly, the recording i own lives on a piece of maxell tape, closely followed by a recording made by natraj, that Indian influenced boston band. They play musica I couldn't possibly play.

soldier

October 5th

Turned out to be a good day after all. Great photo shoot with Thomas, who is always a pleasure, but the combination of the band, Cornelia and Thomas, I think was very successful. Here's the first pictures he sent, in color (I have posted my black and white composites at the Invisible Rays blog.







Then, after that Ms. K organized a surprise party for me, which was in-fact a big surprise. Now that i've been the subject of a surprise I know that I don't like them. Come to think of it I think I reminded myself of Bubby and how she'd react to an unwanted surprise. I was in a little bit of shock for a few minutes but I think I rebounded nicely after that. We ended up partying until the wee hours, in two basic waves: first day people and then night people. I ended up until the middle of the night, or morning rather, kind of buzzed but alone because K had demonstrated her backstroke to bed and that was the end of her attendance.
A mighty fine time was had by all i think, and I have a great toy piano to boast of!

The Unicorns

Wow - a band with The in the title, just like the Rays,or the Beatles, or the The Doors, or The Yay!
So I finally picked up a recommendation CPS made whie I was atrempting to record death cab at Q that day they did the 'fnx broadcast; but all that's the minor part to the point that I've both: a. picked up a new band, and b. used the iTunes store which I've never done before. Mostly though, the record sounds great. Stereo is to be used with so much care, and when used right it's a fucking blast. Less Eq is more, but sometimes what the phase shift doesssss accomplish is genius, especially in the way it adds to stereo perception.
And I still haven't figured out the time zone deal yet. It's set up in hacker fashion of some sort that required math - I thought it had to do or required knowledge of Greenwich meantime, and it fact I think it does.

In a way I feel like my way of creating, and k's, is the ultimate in touching the core because we're used to being environmentally in-articulated, that when we open we crack wide. I thought this while making tea from a tea bag that i ripped with a knife while opening it.


And while all this was happening here's I found a picture Richard Avenon took for the New Yorker of DJ Spooky before Avenon died. I like the shape of his ear. Few people look really comfortable in Avenon's pictures. Surprisingly John Kerry is one. A women I don't recognize is another. By comfortable I mean natural.

Post the Fifth? New Blog

So I had this great idea and that was to make a separate blog for invisible rays stuff, a blog where I could sit down listening to the whole record and write what I thought about all the songs and how we recorded them, and what happened when. That type of thing I was hoping to include with the record and on the web site but it hasn't ever really materialized, so I think that might be the way to do it.
I am going to stop calling things post the this and post the that, because I am starting to loose track, even though I haven't posted that much stuff yet, but it's starting to get confusing, so this should be a good breaking point.
I am listening to Waits' Mule Variations, a record which I bought and as usual didn't listen to that much. I am struck by just how ambient some of the stuff is, and by the concept of recording someone singing into an amp, but recording both the person and the amp at once, from a distance, to give it a PA feeling, it seems like they might have done that a bit with Waits every now and then. There is just such a special feeling to some of the tracks.

In the meantime here's a picture I can't decide if I'll use for a self portrait - I am starting to get an idea of why there are so many bad pictures of people in their profiles. This, for instance, should be a nice picture of me listening on headphones in the van on tour, with a Mardi Gras throw dangling in front of me. I think we're on the way from Atlanta to Georgia. But who knows, eh?

Post The Fourth - The Cat Tree

So I finally started on the cat tree project - it has been in the planning ever since we moved into this apartment in the spring, but I somehow managed to not begin working on it at all. So I built three shelves yesterday, two access ones at 25 inch intervals and one top shelf for hanging out on, but the cats don't seem into them at all yet. The first shelf was a tiny bit used (especially by the two cats I put on it), but K says the distance to the second shelf is too great and that the top shelf is too near the ceiling to jump to. There is space to add shelves or change the shelves sizes; I also have not put any carpeting on them yet, which might make them more desirable, somehow.
Last night, Helmut called realizing the studio was free all weekend wanting to know if we could go in and work on the Gerbils stuff. I was non committal because I want to see Ima this weekend and I didn't know when we'd do that. I was also annoyed that he called late friday to ask about it, because he "forgot the studio was free." I should never have agreed to this project without compensation. I don't remember agreeing to that at all, actually, i remember invoicing them initially... Now I just feel bad about the whole thing, for the studio and for myself, and for them. I feel, because I am friends with some of the band that I have to bring them to a point they can proceed from on there own, but I would rather just give them the mess and make them deal with it.
The good news is that it looks like we might have an Invisible Rays photo shoot on tuesday, which is also my birthday, and I really like the idea of spending my birthday doing that, even though K seemed to not like that idea. All my birthdays in the past few years have been kind of lame, save for one dinner party on Bragdon st. that was exceptionally fun.
What else - oh yeah, MJH got the pro tools sessions I sent and may have begun working on the files, unfortunately i sent him something that is such a mess I can't imagine how he dealt with it. I should have sent something easier. The bad news is that he doesn't have a mac and tools and home, so he's using the school's radio station rig I think, which is probably hard to get comfy on.

Ok , that's a bit of info for now. I am looking forward to adding some images to this mess and maybe messing with the code on the page to make it look a little special.