Category: Positive

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Unbundle

As none other than Neil Young, who I just watched on Colbert this morning, sits tables behind me at Starbucks, I want to talk about some good news of the day, a show of progress if you will: HBO has announced it will start an online streaming service of some kind that does NOT require a cable subscription of any kind! Hallelujah! It certainly took long enough, but this is just excellent and I will be one of the first to put his money where his mouth is! It’ll probably be more than the $15 add-on it is now, but hopefully not much; I’m saving $25 by not patronizing Time Warner anymore, and would gladly pay that for perhaps Showtime and HBO on my computers. Now let’s hope that other talented content providers get on-board and we can shake this thing up a little….

BTW, Neil Young was promoting some music player device that gives you “100%” where an MP3 player gives you “5%”. He is of course strictly speaking correct, simply because the bitrate of the latter is normally a tenth of hat a CD has, and the former probably uses 96Khz, 24Bit audio. Of course our brains are so easily fooled, and I bet you 99% of all people would not be able to distinguish between the two formats, especially with the sonically limited material we listen to today.

Well, I decided to look it up: the device is called the PonoPlayer and costs $400. The corresponding Ponomusic service promises to always provide the highest resolution file-formats available for any particular content, with 44 Khz 16-bit as the lowest. The player does many formats up to 192Khz 24-bit….there you have it!

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The Choir: Military Wives (Updated!)

It’s summer so in Holland it’s time for “Zomergasten”, an iconic yearly TV show, which is perhaps my favorite thing on this medium anywhere. Presented by a different host every year, it has only one guest who, for the three hours the program lasts, has total freedom to discuss any topic, tell any story or share any observation, while showing video clips from any movie/TV show/documentary he wants. Mind you, there are no commercial interruptions! This years presenter is Wilfried de Jong, a very smart and truly interested person, and the first guest was none other than Freek de Jonge, a living legend in the Netherlands. A true artist, de Jonge discusses many many interesting topics and makes it clear that he’s as free as a human can be in this day and age: his one-man theater shows are completely and utterly uncompromised,  not by commerce, nor the desire to be liked by everyone which plagues so many these days.

In this 180 minute journey, we see a young Charlie Chaplin, discovering his talents in a time when close-up shots had not even been considered yet! We witness the most unbelievable put by Tiger Woods: the movement of the ball includes what looks like about a 90 degree turn, and then a teetering on the edge of the hole for literally seconds before it seems like the growing roar of the crowd provides the last little push it needs to go in. There are many more very interesting parts, but where it really got me was when Freek showed us a few minutes of a British program called The Choir: Military Wives.

It’s the fourth season of a show in which conductor Gareth Malone rounds up groups of people to form a singing group. This is no populist BS though, he works them, but more importantly, literally makes them better people. I’ve said many times the we westerners don’t sing together enough! I haven’t seen the whole show, but in the 5 minutes we got to witness on Zomergasten, at first we see a few dozen women whose husbands are away at war; these are ladies who know each other, but in England there’s not much socializing between folks of different ranks so they don’t know each other well. Also, most are not singers and visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation. In addition, military wives are probably in a similarly rigid system as their husbands, not used to the ‘cutting loose and letting go’ that music begs for.

By the time that they perform in front of prince Charles at Royal Albert Hall (!!!!) their faces have completely changed; I get tears in my eyes writing this, I can see the unity, the peace, the togetherness, the confidence. It’s like they were girls and now they are women. Freek makes some very fascinating observations: “when their husbands come back from the war, they’re going to have a problem!” The women have now far surpassed their partners in this journey of discovery we call life, as the latter have probably regressed in their understanding of balance and happiness. Wives who acted like they had never been listened to have now learned to wield the power of their voices, in the best, most selfless way possible.

One final interesting thing: even though most Dutch public TV shows are watchable online these days, for free by the way, most of the time Zomergasten is not, but this episode was. You know why? Because the restrictions always come due to ‘geographic’ license issues in this over-commercialized world; but true art is not run by money managers! There were no Disney clips, no major network Amercian TV…….. and the result was another perfect example of the potential of this Medium.

UPDATE: found out that the entire three part series can be watched on Youtube in perfectly fine quality! I watched it last night and was so moved……. Choir Director Gareth Malone is quite an interesting character, and at points all his judgements of these women (“they literally have no voice!”) seem quite pretentious and almost vulgar, but then the faces don’t lie and the incredible joy and thankfulness they experience moved me to tears. Wow!

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Streaming

The river of nonsense based on misinformation thickens every day! From idiotic videos ‘proving’ that no airplane hit the second tower on 9/11 (2.5 million views ladies and gentlemen!) to diet advice stemming from horribly wrong conclusions drawn from questionable scientific research, we are in danger! You see, humans put a value on information based in large part on how many others they hear state it. We are herd animals after all, and so we follow. Before the information age, in order for you to hear thousands of people say something, a very large percentage of folks directly around you would have to do so. These days, even if only 1% of a population believes something, but they are loud and active, it can seem like everybody believes it.

Here’s something I do know a something about: performance royalties for music. If one were to believe the internet, Spotify is taking advantage of composers and publishers, paying them horribly low amounts. Nothing is further from the truth actually. Two months ago I did an experiment: I signed up for a paid membership for one month, at $10, and then proceeded to put XR7 on loop. In the last few days I’ve been getting my regular payments for that period and they’re actually good: 1.24 cents per play! That means every time ONE person listens to ONE song ONE time, I get paid more than a penny. Contrary to popular belief that is WAY better than any terrestrial radio ever paid! Not all the songs have come through for this period, including The Robot Song, which I played on repeat separately, but already my little experiment has brought in $25, or actually MORE than I paid for my membership. How that is unfair is beyond me……

Now, I don’t know what the pay scale is at Pandora and it probably is worse, but still, whenever these musicians around here bitch about the new model, I want to slap them. They post stuff on FB, about how someone had a million plays but only made $400. Well guess what, if your song plays on a broadcast radio station and is heard by a million people, how much do you think you get paid? This is part of the problem caused by the idiotic price of 99 cents that iTunes has instilled on us. It’s outrageous……..

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Jakarta: part four

Alright, it’s Tuesday, we’ve been here for four days now, it’s time to venture out! As some of you already know, Indonesia was a Dutch colony for the longest time, so there have to be remnants. I do a little research and find out about Cafe Batavia, the same name my people gave Jakarta many, many years ago. Supposedly there is one of the only public squares there in the whole city, a place where Hollanders used to hang criminals. Fatahillah Square is also home to the old City Hall and many, many street vendors. I convince Dave we must go and Michael Paulo is game too, so we order a taxi. Boy, this is a crazy big city…..we pass malls, endless mopeds, weird fake Amsterdam-style tall narrow buildings with some kind of Dutch bakery inside.

When my phone tells me we’re close, we tell the driver to pull over and let us out. And there it is: the smell that hits us in the face like a wet towel soaked in excrement! OH MY GOD! This is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before…..we’re right by a river and it’s truly just an open sewer. The most amazing thing is that people are hanging out right there, and even more bizarrely, preparing and selling food. I can’t even think of eating. Wow! We cross a bridge and get right to the square, and see the restaurant. Inside we find some fresh air thankfully and we proceed to have a great meal actually. Erwtensoep (split pea soup!) and Sate, Dave has an excellent Chinese style shrimp dish, nice little 20cl glass cokes! Really civilized and delicious and the tab for all three of us comes to $50 or so, expensive for Jakarta but totally worth it. When we go down, there’s actually a band playing in the bar. They sound good, playing stuff like “Mi Tierra” and other international hits. Well, it’s time to go outside again, and brave the odor…

On Fatahillah Square there are many people, most sitting on spread out blankets, selling trinkets or food, or just lounging. Michael wants to get a beer so I check Google Maps and we start walking. Before we know it, he’s on a mission, walking ahead of us, so all we can do is follow. Even when he starts leaving the touristy area, and I warn that the map shows nothing there, he keeps going and the next thing we know, he crosses this crazy street with no lanes and buses flying by. Now we’ve done it! There are more bodies of water, all smelling like death in their own special ways and the melange is getting scary. Still, food available everywhere, people working on their bikes, Tuk-Tuks everywhere, people coming up to us offering rides with a look of disbelief. We just keep walking. The smell gets worse and worse, to the point where Dave is really starting to freak out and honestly it feels like we’re touring some kind of bio-hazard. Finally, a regular cab pulls up and we get in. For the first 3 minutes, all we could do was laugh! Unbelievable how disgusting this was. When we get back to the hotel, each one of us has to take a shower. Damn!

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Jakarta: part two

That first Friday we got there, the Java Jazz Festival was already well underway. It was close to 5PM by the time we arrived and Snarky Puppy, whom we really wanted to see, wasn’t to go on until 12:30AM; it was going to be the only time out of three they did when we wouldn’t be playing ourselves, but we were too tired to make it. Getting to the venue required getting on a shuttle bus which could take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes, so it just wasn’t gonna happen. Luckily there was a Jam session every night at the Borobudur where every musician with a badge got 2 free beers! Dave and I made stayed until about 11:30PM when complete exhaustion took over. Organist Tony Monaco was leading the thing and let me tell you, he was GREAT. A lot of familiar faces were everywhere; sometimes it seemed like another night at Cafe Cordiale! Off to bed, Saturday would be time to work….

Woke up pretty early, but thankfully was able to go back to sleep for a few more hours that morning. Lobby call wasn’t until 4PM or so and by that time I felt pretty good actually. We were told the trip to the Jakarta International Expo could take a long time depending on traffic, but it went reasonably fast and we got there in about 25 minutes. Boy, the part we entered through looked like a deserted Zoo or something, a post-apocalyptic amusement park; just gates and empty buildings! A couple of turns later we’re at the main entrance into what looks like a mall. Again everything goes through metal detectors and luggage scanners and we’re in! The building actually is a mall, with sporting goods stores, restaurants etc. On the other side of it though is the main section with many different halls. In all, there were 19 stages, ranging from conference rooms to a couple in the convention center part that were as big as airplane hangars! Ours seats about 3000 or so and is called C1. When we get there, the band before us is just about to start and it turns out they’re really a pretty complex fusion band, not bad actually. After they’re done, we have about 45 minutes to change over the stage which doesn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped….

By the time doors open again to let our crowd in, we’re not quite ready, especially when it comes to monitoring, but the room fills up almost completely and we go for it! It’s a good show, but the repressed style of the Indonesian audience doesn’t quite help overcome the jet lag that sets in halfway for the band. As is normal with festivals, people come and go, so by the end we have a smaller crowd, but it’s all good. We have another chance the next day, a little earlier in the same room. It’s really amazing how well-behaved these folks are! With 50,000 visitors a day you’d expect some trouble, or rowdiness, but it almost feels like a church picnic! It turns out that the whole city is really like that, I expect in large part due to the fact that they are very religious over there. The mosques that litter the city go off on a regular basis, blaring Arabic prayers very loudly into the air. Even the last night, staying on the 22nd floor I was still woken up at 3 in the morning.

On Sunday we do redeem ourselves and play an energetic, refreshed show! This time the audience keeps growing as times goes on and the arch is just perfect. Dean West, our regular East Coast tour manager and soundman is actually there because he’s working with India Arie later on, and he helps us get the monitors right. Quite happy, after Keiko is done with her obligations of signing CDs and such, she, Dave and I go and check out some more music. Tania Maria is awesome, the tribute to George Duke featuring Jeff Lorber, Chuck Loeb and many others is wonderful; the whole place is going off! That night, the jam is pretty great too actually. Organist Tony Monaco starts off the night again and when Dutch musicians Peter Beets and Gijs Dijkhuizen sit in Dave gets very happy. Peter is a pianist there to perform a tribute to Oscar Peterson and Gijs his drummer. Boy, these dudes swing hard! Everyone one is there and many are giving me their free beer tickets, so I find myself in a Smooth Jazz sandwich, getting a little drunker than I prolly should, having an awesome time.

The next day, the adventure is over for most musicians there; Dave and I were supposed to fly back to L.A. as well, but we got hired by Brian Simpson to do another gig six days later so we get to stay! Keiko is flying to Japan on a later flight, and being the class act she is, offers to buy us lunch at the Borobudur. She explains that this place is famous for its Oxtail soup and now I know why. Man, it is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten: rich in flavor without being overwhelming, complex but familiar in the best way. Really, the food at the hotel was incredible every time. Even the bread was just perfect, unsalted butter from New Zealand, delicious deserts from all over the world, Sushi to Rendang, homemade ice cream….. and the coffee…….. so what are we to do? We’ve got 4 more days off and if we just keep eating, I’m gonna turn into a tub!

To be continued….

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Variety = spice

Boy, it’s been a week of much variety! Last Friday we had a great night of Jazz and R&B with the Jeff Robinson band at Pip’s on LaBrea. From Miles Davis to Johnny Guitar Watson, P-Funk to Jeff’s awesome original tunes, his gigs are the best kind of workout, the kind I moved to the US for. Saturday, Santa Monica was the place for a session with Ukrainian producer Sasha. He needed some bass on a couple of tracks and put me to work. The music was real raw and punky, Sergio Gonzalez on drums, and he wanted lots of fret noise and really sloppy but groovy stuff. Not exactly easy for someone who’s spent his whole life trying to improve his technique and sound! But, it’s a state of mind and with the right abandon on my behalf, we found it.

On Sunday, I played piano for the first time at the afternoon service at St. Paul The Apostle’s in Westwood. Chris Haller had asked me to sub for him on bass a number of times last year, but the regular pianist moved to Arizona so they needed someone and gave me the gig 3 times a month. Of course there can hardly be more contrast with the shredding from the night before! The church has an old but nice Steinway and there’s not even a drummer in the band. Musically it’s quite enjoyable though: Peter Torsiello, the musical director, is an excellent musician, Chris a fine bassist, and the singing is always inspired and on point.

Next up, on Tuesday, it was time for some EDM believe it or not. Sergio had told Sasha that I’m a ‘mad professor’ with synths and such, so he came over to check out the studio. He liked what he heard and came back on Wednesday for a 6 hour session. The result is pretty cool actually! Next week we should be able to finish the track, after which the vocals will be recorded back in the Ukraine. I’m talking Swedish House Mafia type of stuff, tight beat, super funky electro basslines, “huge” lead synths. But Wednesday wasn’t done yet! Next up: Mouse’s studio for a session with Natasha Wood. We recorded a floor tom for her song “Part Of Me” and then a violinist named Miguel showed up to play some really beautiful stuff! Actually he played the Viola and he brought it! Otherwise this particular track consists of piano, bass, guitar, percussion and 3 glockenspiel tracks. Nice stuff….

Afterwards, I called Johnny G and we went for a night cap at the Federal in North Hollywood, where bass phenom Hadrien Feraud was hosting a jam night. Add in the one and only Chris Coleman on drums, and you can have a band of plumbers playing the chicken dance and it would still groove. Boy, what a blessing it is to be able to live in this neck of the woods……

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Nick en Simon in Cuba

You know, all my serious music friends in Holland have no respect for these guys, or at least so it seems. They do sing sappy songs in Dutch, are white as the driven snow, but I dig ’em. First of all, they have talent and real skills, and they know the difference. Here they are in Cuba, where nobody knows their names; wrote a song, translated into Spanish, ended up in what looks like a barbershop, with a 95 year old singer…….the man sings and the tears start rolling….man, the sound coming from this human being captivates everyone…it’s a class act that lets others be the stars of the show. BTW, you can book this man; he’s working on a tour of Europe in 2014. Of course his appearance is dependent on being alive!

I remember an old episode of Dutch TV where Nick en Simon were in South Africa. The ended up on a balcony with some local musicians who still hold Graceland in high regard. They jammed Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes so beautifully, so in tune with each other, grounded in that foundation of admiration for the song and music in general. People growing up half-way around the globe from each other, in perfect synch because of a simple song. It’s these humble, quiet things that commercial TV lacks, at least the kind paid for with advertising.

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X-Ray Christmas

Got a check from X-Ray Dog today: this is a music library company I did some music for with my friend Jono Brown years ago. I have 50% writer credit on  2 tunes called “Into The Abyss” and “Pinche Rey”, and 33% on a third, “Jono Cubano” which we did with Chris Smith. The amazing thing is, on this statement alone, there use reported from: France, Germany, Russia, the UK, Ukraine, South Africa, and Mexico! Maybe even more amazing: my total share of the royalties for all of 2012 plus half of 2013 comes to $40. Mind you, these are not single uses per country, we’re talking a 4 page legal size statement. I’m not complaining, it’s free money, but it still seems a little silly, doesn’t it?

On a conceptual level, it’s very interesting, wild to think that evidence of my existence is found all over the world. When I put out my first solo CD, I got orders from as far as Thailand and Japan, and there are now copies in Turkey, Brazil, all over Europe, Mexico. Between my two solos CDs I’ve probably just about made back my investment, but I’ve created something that will outlast me and that’s exciting! I’ve always been more interested in the art of music, than the commerce, so to me this is great success. I still believe in the compositions, they are not burdened by stylistic restrictions which limit their lifespan, at least I hope they’re not.

The beautiful thing is that the systems for residual payments will only get more and more automated so with proper labeling, royalties should continue to come in. With the continuing homogenization of music increasing, the call for truly original content is getting louder, and not just around here, the most unoriginal big city in the world. I think we will witness a resurgence of art of great proportions soon….

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Illuminatus

People make their own definitions of words sometimes; it’s not without danger, because it leads to misunderstanding when two parties involved in conversation use the same word, but mean something different. The subtleties of language are endless, but a good thing to do is to go back to the where a term came from to find common ground. There is a lot of talk about the “Illuminati” these days, so where did this name come from? Wikipedia has a fairly good article about it; it says:

“The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, “enlightened”) is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776 to oppose superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life, abuses of state power, and to support women’s education and gender equality. The Illuminati were outlawed along with other secret societies by the Bavarian government leadership with the encouragement of the Roman Catholic Church, and permanently disbanded in 1785.”

Funny, isn’t it? Today the name is used mostly by conspiracy theorists to describe a secret group of people with power, “the man” if you will, created to effect a new world order! Originally, it was an organization that opposed the powers that were, fighting against abuses of state power and such, and vehemently disliked by for instance the Catholic Church! The enlightened part is most interesting to me, as with advancement in understanding comes a better way to do things, doesn’t it?

So if we define Illuminati broadly as those who are the most connected, with the most power, and access to information, is it really a “secret” society? This is the part I don’t understand about the conspiracy theorists! Don’t they understand that things that are obvious, clear and evident, are by definition NOT a conspiracy? When people get together to work to change things, it’s NOT secret, the agendas of world leaders are NOT hidden; it’s clear what they want, at least to me. Does that mean I’m an Illuminatus?

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Jellytime

Now that I’ve made the move to become contract-free, I will also be buying phones at full retail price. I’ve had my HTC Inspire 4G (aka the Desire HD) for more than 2 years, and even though its manufacturer has dropped support for it a LONG time ago it’s turned out to be a great purchase. You see, while it officially never got any newer version than 2.3.6 (=Gingerbread), the geeks out there have pretty much perfected builds of 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on this device! I flashed a ROM called “Jellytime” and now my phone is literally better than ever! It’s got all the newest Google bells and whistles and runs buttery smooth, even after installing all my apps. Can’t believe it, but I really have no need for buying something new until it breaks. The 4.3″ screen is still excellent, mapping flies, it browses nicely, it’s got the newest camera interface. The improvements Google has made in its OS are quite impressive: it’s not often that old hardware will run a newer version better than it ever ran the older one……

At the same time, I’m really glad to see that there are some great low cost new smartphones hitting the market. From Samsung’s Galaxy Ace series (4″ Android for $200 or so) to Nokia’s Lumia 521 (4″ Windows Phone 8 for $150), you  can now get a device that does just about everything without breaking the bank. I’m talking full-fledged phones with the newest versions of their respective OSs, just with slightly lower specs. It just seems sillier and sillier to spend the typical $700 for the newest toy, doesn’t it?