Author: Bob

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Everything is free/Josephine

There are a number of great songs that first entered my ears as cover versions, and those cover versions were so damned good that they biased my ears to forever favor them over the original. When I go on to cover the song myself, as I often do with songs I love, I am then in the position of covering the cover. I’m pretty sure I’ve even covered a cover of a cover. It’s all to the good, as far as I’m concerned. I enjoying playing and singing songs that move me, and for me that experience admits no thoughts of authorship or credit. “Everything is free” by Gillian Welch was introduced to me my Madison Cunningham, who hits all her covers out of the park. When I went to search for the original, I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it every bit as much as the cover, maybe even a bit more.

Another thing I’ve discovered recently is that when I go a long stretch without using my recording equipment, I forget how to use it, and so it is that I continually find myself in a one step forward, two steps back situation with respect to my recording skills. Getting back on the recording horse, for me, almost always involves recording a live version of whatever cover song I’ve most recently learned. Can you guess what song I recorded this weekend?

There are so many, too many, ways to lay down a live acoustic recording using various configurations of the toys I happen to have in my home studio. Since I’ve forgotten which ways I like best, I chose a completely different configuration (different mic, interface, effects) on live cover song #2 of this weekend, “Josephine” by Chris Cornell.

Although both were hastily recorded one-take wonders transposed into keys more suitable to my relatively weak vocals, I kinda like ’em, and I’m reminded – for the gazillionth time – how much I enjoy noodling around in my studio. I’ll forgo any declarations about how I’m going to start doing this “on the reg,” as the kids say. Next summer is a long way off, and I’ve yet to summon the resolve to be consistently creatively productive in the throes of the work-a-day routine. Then again, who knows. I may yet surprise myself.

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HTG Podcast #36: Incoherent commutation and inescapable assholery

In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I rant and ramble incoherently on my morning commute to and from work. Eventually the chain of associations led to my admiration of Gillian Welch’s song Everything is free, so I hastily recorded a cover version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything is free, by Gillian Welch

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Wings of Hope

Visited the dermatologist yesterday and he found three potential new basal cell carcinoma lesions. If confirmed by the biopsy results, that would make five in the last eleven months. I expected that the spot just over my right eyebrow was a problem, and I half-expected that the thing on my neck could be an issue, but I wasn’t expecting him to biopsy the supposedly innocuous “sebaceous hyperplasia” spot on the bridge of my nose. As usual, Happiness = Reality – Expectations, and so worries about disfiguring surgery scenarios took over my mind for several hours and took me on an unpleasant journey through a dark jungle of fruitless catastrophizing and ill-advised google searches.

Speaking of jungles, I stayed up watching the Werner Herzog documentary Wings of Hope, the story of how a 17-year-old girl, Juliane Koepcke, survived a two-mile fall through the sky after being ejected from an airplane, then survived a ten-day journey through the Peruvian jungle before being rescued by locals. A truly amazing story that I had never gotten wind of before. Incredible. If she could survive all that, I should be able to get through this skin cancer situation. I was told by the surgeon who carved up my forehead last summer that I should expect to see him and his scalpel again. I was hoping it wouldn’t be so soon, hoping his future scalpel exploits would at least spare my nose, as a wound there (if comparable to the two inflicted on my forehead) will no doubt define my appearance, for several months at least, to all who gaze upon me.

Hope is the province of the helpless, those of us who can do nothing about it, those of us in need of rescue or a lucky break. There is hope, then there is acceptance of whatever happens. In any event, we must keep heading downstream.

 

Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash

A 17 YEAR OLD GIRL SURVIVED A 2 MILE FALL WITHOUT A PARACHUTE, THEN TREKKED ALONE 10 DAYS THROUGH THE PERUVIAN RAINFOREST

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Why walk a dog?

Why record a cover of Jack White‘s “Why walk a dog?”

I don’t know. Why anything? Why wipe your ass? Sheesh…

(Actually, I was running an experiment to see if I could use my old BR-864 as an effects unit with my new Zoom LiveTrak L-12, and this song just came to mind, because it’s short and sweet. It worked, so I guess the null hypothesis was rejected, or something like that.)

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One more dream (Another) – Video

Green Desk Studios – 3/3/19
Summer’s here, and the time is right, to be messing around in Green Desk Studios all day, every day. Back in March I did a podcast in which I shared my latest tune, which is really an old tune/new tune hybrid, called One more dream (Another). Fast forward to this week and inspired by the fun I had putting together a recent video for a Hendrix cover, I decided to do one up for this latest “original.” Thanks to Mike Lacoste for his cool space imagery, which he has made available for copyright-free use on Pixabay.

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Oneironautical soirée

Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942. Exactly 28 years later would be the eve of my own birth. Jimi had died two months prior, on September 18, 1970, and so we weren’t exactly “on this earth” contemporaneously. I was inside another person’s body when Jimi’s soul left his, an ocean between us. All of this signifies nothing, of course, but it’s simply my weird way of framing the following cover of May this be love, which is one of my favorite Hendrix tunes. This is the first music I’ve recorded using my new home studio set-up, and every step of the process was experimental. If there was a reason I chose this song – and there probably wasn’t a reason – it was because it’s something I can usually play from beginning to end without noticeably fucking up. Hopefully I will be inspired to keep at it and put some work into developing my own music.

I also found myself fooling around with making a video for the song, and in the process remembered that I have several videos on Vimeo. Watching them was a sentimental trip down the spiral staircase into past versions of myself, and a complex mix of emotions were pumped through interior duct work. If I recall correctly, I put the cover song videos on Vimeo because YouTube was giving me shit for copyright crimes against humanity. Given that YouTube is starting to feeling a little gross, perhaps I’ll give the ol’ Vimeo account a little action going forward.

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Snort-cycles, optimal microphone placement, and watching Gilligan’s Island through static in 1978

Jolted awake once again at 4am, once again by the emotional intensity of a dream scene. I was standing in front of a TV glowing with static. Spontaneously, I made some sort of snorting noise as I took air in through my nasal cavity, and coincident with this bodily action an image began to form on the screen. Making the connection, I intentionally repeated the snort as I watched the screen, and lo and behold I could see the moving images coming in with increased clarity, as if I were turning the dial of an old-school antenna in an effort to find a watchable feed of Gilligan’s Island back in 1978.

The moment the inhalation of my snort transitioned to an exhale, the image would start to fade, but I quickly learned to control my breath in such a way as to keep the broadcast going as I cycled into another snort, which increased the clarity and allowed me to see what was actually being portrayed. It hit me in a flash. The scene playing out on the screen was one of my memories! Holy shit, I could see my memories on the goddamned TV screen!

I frantically called out to my wife, who was in the other room. When she arrived I went into another snort and began wildly gesticulating toward the TV screen. I was able to keep the broadcast going for a solid few seconds, long enough to be sure she would notice. I caught my breath and shouted to her, “Could you see it?!?! Did you see it?!?!”

“No! I didn’t see anything!”, she replied.

Shattered by the realization that the entire experience was a mere hallucination and delusion, I began to wail, which caused my wife to look distressed. I apologized profusely to her as I continued to cry and moan with enough intensity to send me back into the waking state.

So, yeah. Been dreamin’ and stuff.

Had to reschedule the ultrasound for my knee, as the process got caught up in the red tape of “workers’ comp.” Meanwhile my condition continues to slowly improve. Hopefully I’ll get a definitive diagnosis by the end of the week. Being disabled is a drag, especially when there is shit to be done around the house. Temperatures jumped into the 90s, so I needed to get on the roof to get the swamp coolers up and running. We had a new roof put on this winter, which required the coolers to be disassembled and reassembled, and in the process they were seriously fucked up by the roof crew. I was cursing them all to hell while doing my best to make the necessary repairs on one leg. Roof crew be damned, I eventually got the job done.

I’ve been messing around in the studio, mostly getting to know the possibilities and limitations of my new mixer/recorder. With all the hours I’ve logged on YouTube learning about things like inputs, outputs, mic placement, sub-mixes, gain staging, etc., I might be able to get a job as a sound engineer, but for the lack of actual finished recordings. I’m about ready to see what I can do with this new toy. If it sucks, I’ll just blame it on the bum knee, or those asshole roofer dudes.

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Summer dreams

A deflating end of the school year/beginning of the summer as I find myself in the all-to-familiar position of leg elevated, ice-pack wrapped around the knee. This time around I was simply making a quick little juke-move during the staff vs. 5th-graders kickball game and that’s all it took to deliver the sensation of tissue tearing. I will have to await the imaging results in order to confirm or amend the doc’s initial diagnosis of torn lateral collateral ligament. If confirmed, I will have to add LCL tear to the growing list of knee damage sustained over the past three decades or so: torn right ACL; torn meniscus (right knee); fractured tibial plateau (left); torn left ACL; torn meniscus (left).

I’ve already moved into the acceptance stage and I’m determined to head the gong this summer, no matter the physical limitations. I suppose my running goals will need to be shelved, and I will have to amend my plans to tackle some projects around the house, but I can still do calisthenics, still meditate everyday, write, play and record music, podcast, and all the rest. Gotta move forward with focus and determination.

This morning, Day One, I was up at 4am meditating. I had been jarred awake by a dream in which my wife told me she was pregnant with triplets. She assured me it would be no sweat to get an abortion, a suggestion that broke my heart, as I was feeling expansive about the prospect of rolling with this twist of fate and fully embracing the changes it would entail. In the real world, I have no intention to start a family at the age of 49, and I’m sure my wife is dead set against having kids. But damn, it was a powerful dream, and the heartbreak my dream-self felt was intense.

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Day One is in the books. The usual Saturday chore routine (mowing the lawn; doing the laundry) took up a big chunk of time, as I was puttering around like a centenarian. But I managed to get it done, get some exercise, and fool around in the studio for a little while before running out of steam. Told my wife about the triplet-abortion dream, and she responded with raised eyebrows. Or was it furrowed eyebrows? Anyway, the eyebrows can be deceptively expressive, a kind of window dressing of the soul. And lateral collateral ligaments can be like the foundation of a building, swaying with the earthquake waves in stable synchrony, only to buckle under in a fucking kickball game with 10-year-olds!

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HTG Podcast #34: Uncle Al

In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I make noises into microphones at the Tampa International Airport, in my bedroom studio, and looking out over my back yard. 

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