My Toughest Audience

I played a solo performance on Tuesday to a class of 4th graders. I was invited by my girlfriend's daughter to her music class' "sharing day", and I showed up with guitar and harmonica in hand. I played Steely Dan's "Monkey In Your Soul", accompanied by my iBook running Reason playing my programs of drums, bass, and horns. Afterwards there was a question answer session, which was great. Lots of questions about the band and what we do. Some of the better questions:
"How did you learn to make the computer play the music?"
"Was that sound a cello?"
"How good were you when you first started playing the guitar?"
Once again, a great time and I got a Thank You hug from Michaela.

Picked up the Marilyn Manson Best-of CD/DVD set. The DVD was a good idea, all of his music videos in one place, many of which I've never seen before. The last Manson album, THE GOLDEN AGE OF GROTESQUE", had this god-awful short film by Manson where he kept saying "Stop rehearsing Alcohol, start performing chemicals." I even wrote a Beavis and Butthead commentary for it:
(TRANSCRIBED OVER A TWENTY MINUTE PERIOD)

Beavis: This sucks. Change it.
Butthead: Shut up. Something cool’s supposed to happen.
Beavis: The music is stupid. It’s like... Circus death stuff. Why is that guy putting like, shoe polish on his face?
Butthead: “My butt is a VCR... My butt is a VCR.” huh-huh. Huh-huh.
Beavis: HEY BUTTHEAD! CHECK IT OUT! THOSE CHICKS ARE NAKED!
Butthead: WHOA! Wait.. You dillhole – those chicks are wearing fake boobs. I wonder if Manson’s gonna like, do it with those chicks.
Beavis: But they’re like, tied together or something. I could score with those chicks, cause they're like, crazy and would, uh, let me.
Butthead: Beavis, you couldn't score with chicks like that even if they were crazy. They only like guys in like, goth bands. Like Marilyn Manson.
Beavis: Oh, uh, yeah.
Butthead: This is stupid. I’m gonna put another DVD in.
Beavis: NO, WAIT! NANANANANANANAH! mmmmm....STOP REHEARSING ALCOHOL! START PERFORMING NARCOTICS!
Butthead: huh-huh. Chattering X-rays. That's cool.
Beavis: heh-heh. Oooo. Y’know, I don’t know anything about making movies and stuff, but, could somebody have like turned on a light or something?
Butthead: Maybe they made it at night. What, it’s over?
Beavis: I told you that sucked. Next time we’re watching “Cliff ‘Em All!”
Butthead: Shut UP, Beavis. Watching those two chicks made me like, hungry. Is there any beef jerky left?
Beavis: Uuuh, no. I ate it.

Playlist Magazine LIKES me!

So there's this new magazine about iTunes, iPods and MP3 players Called Pllaylist, and they have this new website that has a forum. I posted my mono file trick for saving space on your iPod (first posted here on April 18th), and Editor in Chief Christopher Breen, author of "Secrets Of The iPod" and an iPod/Mac guru himself, praised it. I am flattered. Check out their forums. I'm listed as Billeblast.

The new Frank Zappa DVD-Audio release, QuAUDIOPHILIac, is freakin' awesome. Quite possibly the best posthumous release of Frank's material yet. If you have a surround system, you owe it to yourself to seek this out. I've been a vocal critic of some of the other recent Zappa vault releases (most notably the mix on "Halloween" and the authoring errors on "Baby Snakes"), but this one is the shiznit. Get it. Highlights: "Rollo" from the ORCHESTRAL FAVORITES sessions, a jam session of the themes that eventually made up the composition "Chunga's Revenge", and extended versions of "Ship Ahoy" and "Waka/Jawaka", the latter minus some of the horns and a Frank guitar solo played though a ring modulator. The only other time I've heard a guitar through a ring modulator is "Too Much Paranoias" by Devo.

Back With Blurred Eyesight

Well, first of all, I am posting again after a delay of over 15 weeks. Yeah, I suck, but in a good way. I have been making notes about what to blog about and if I make good on all of these suggestions I've made for myself, I'll be giving you all sorts of constructive ranting. But it is Sunday morning and I haven't read my Best Buy circular yet, so here goes.

The blurred eyesight is a result of a mishap during my retinal checkup over the past week. My doctor puts a special lens on my eye so he can see the blood vessels inside and determine if any further laser treatments are needed. As sometimes happens to contact lens users (of which I am not), my eyeball got scratched. Wasn't that much of a bother the first day but then it got infected. I just thought it was bothering me, so upon the doctor's office's advice, I bought some lubricating gel to help the healing. That was three days ago, and it's been hurting more ever since. I just got off the phone with the on-call eye doctor to prescribe me some antibiotic ointment, and I'll be picking that up when I go buy my paper. Arrgh.

Music stuff:
Rumor has it The Beatles and Apple Computer are coming close to a settlement on their dispute over the name 'Apple". A settlement of over 20 million dollars was paid to them years ago and an agreement was made that Apple would not start a music company, but you'd have to be hiding under a rock for the last three years to see that Apple now makes the world's most popular portable music player and has the biggest and most widely used music download service. If the rumors are true, The Beatles company, Apple Corps, will get a settlement of historic proportions, previously associated only with class action lawsuits, and Paul McCartney may end up being a member of the Apple board of directors, which now includes (shudder) former vice president Al Gore. Will all Apple users have to "go veggie" now?

Depeche Mode will be releasing an album of remixes in October. From the band that practically invented the marketing plan associated with constantly remixing their work (sorry, Puffy/Diddy/Sean/whateverthe f%*& your name is), this should be really cool stuff. The preview track, a version of "Enjoy The Silence" mixed by one of the guys in Linkin Park, ROCKS. But looking on their site, most of the tracks are previously released remixes going back to 1981, which the diehard fans (myself being one of them) have bought at least twice already. Only a handful of the 20 or more tracks that they are releasing as part of this whole project (2CDs, bonus CDs, limited edition singles, etc.) are newer than 2001. Another marketing ploy. What, you don't have enough of my money yet? I want a check from Dave Gahan for helping to finance his heroin habit a few years ago, and while you're at it, do the same for a hundred thousand or more of your other fans, One other thing would be nice - a formal apology for Dave Gahan's solo album. Can you say suck? No, not in a good way.