Radvent Dec 1

So @lasertron is doing a thing, beginning with her blog over at PrincessLasertron.com, where she’s issuing a blog topic every day throughout the month of December.  She asked some others if they’d be willing to join her, and here I am.

I’m not so bold to think I’ll actually blog every day this month, but I’ll try.

Enough of that, here’s #1.  @lasertron writes:

What were you doing five years ago today?
Where were you?
Who were you with?
What did you want?
What did you have?

Lucky me, I get the “bad remembering” part of the writing exercise.  Five years ago I was living with my ex in Illinois, planning our wedding and getting ready for the holiday season.  If you know me and my thoughts about weddings and holidays you’re cringing right now at the thought of reading this post.

Almost everything at this point in time revolved around the whole wedding thing.  Our trip to Vegas, the reception to be held in Marquette, MI afterwards.  Who was coming?  What are the travel arrangements?  Was the venue paid for?  Did you contact the cake lady?  Blah blah blah.  All that shit that people think is important at that time in life, but are really just trivial details that won’t ever matter again.  Weddings are such crap.  All that money wasted to prove to others 1) How much you “love each other”, 2) How big of a party you can throw, 3) How much better you are than everyone else, 4) How creative you are.

What did I want?  Honestly, I wanted the holiday and the wedding to be over with.  As an adult I’ve never enjoyed Christmas time.  Spending time with my family is not something I enjoy.  The “you spend it with those of genetic resemblance to you because you have to” thing never really jived with me, but I was able to deal at this point in time because I had a partner in crime.  I didn’t have to sit in the corner alone feeling like I wanted it to be over, I had at least someone to talk to when visiting my family.

And what did I have?  I don’t know.  I guess I had the same things anyone that is just about to celebrate christmas and get married have.  Annoyances, bills and a bride-to-be who may not be exceptionally easy to work with.

I’ll do my best to be less bitter next time.  This one is kind of a hot button for me, and I apologize.

Barcamp Omaha 2010 was rad (and the jam was fun)

Thanks to the organization team of Barcamp2010 here in Omaha it was another great event.  Learned some stuff and had some fun.

Also thanks to everyone to indulged me in my attempt for a lunchtime jam session.  I can’t honestly say it was the most musical thing ever performed, but we all had fun anyway :)  Thanks to everyone who took part!  It was nice to mix things up a bit.

Photos and video stolen from this post.

Barcamp 2010: The Musical

I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to do for Barcamp this year. I was chatting over lunch today with this week’s Coworking Wednesday participants about how I wished there was something different I could do. Something collaborative and break the mold of what an unconference session should be. I mentioned music stuff and @whatevermatt mentioned a drum circle.

I thought about that a while (at least 2 to 3 minutes) later that day (today) and thought I’d see if I could pull something off.  So here’s an attempt to get a jam session rocking at Barcamp.

So here’s a call to all Barcamp participants who have access to any kind of simple, acoustic, portable instrument that is jam-able (hammered dulcimer, Roland 808: maybe not so much.  Think hand drum, acoustic guitar, rain sticks, stand-up bass, iPhone, didgeridoo, you get the idea.)

And don’t worry, I already talked to @lasertron about a way to do it so speakers don’t get upset: she suggested to have it at lunch!

This is informal, and it’d be cool for as many people to join in who are willing.  If you have any extra gear at home that might be appropriate for this, bring it!  I’ll bring what I have as well.

Tell your friends!

Lost and Found: A video experiment started in 2006

In 2006 I was diligently working on my (still unreleased) new album “The Longest Post”. With that I decided to create a couple music videos both as an experiment on if I could make something fun, and to have a visual way to distribute some songs.

A couple apartment moves later and the hard drives with the music videos were lost.

Until now. In October, 2010 I found the hard drives while cleaning out my music studio and decided it was time to show them to the world.

They weren’t completely finished, however. But a couple nights of some polish and fixes made it so the first, “Got Skillz?” could be released. And here it is.

Some things of note:
You can tell it’s from 2007. Old school web pages and apps. You see an old version of YouTube complete with a greasemonkey script changing the background color of it running within an old version of Firefox.  I was running a lot more extensions then than I remember.

Also given the lack of resources as far as what video I had to work with I experimented with using the game/app/world of “Second Life” for some of the character stuff to emulate the “party in the computer” vibe.

The video “Got Skillz?” tells the story of the party inside the computer. The song says “Get off the floor, and get on the net. The dance you see there is unbelievable I bet.” and the video shows it to be true.

It also mocks the world of rap music by itself being a rap song, but showing how the character of Real-ity doesn’t belong in the ghetto with the homies and would probably just find the nearest computer and get online.

See below for a “behind the scenes” video from when I was working on this originally (February 2007).

Check out facebook.com/​pages/​Real-ity/​192311904989 for updates and new tunes. And as always gabekangas.com to see what Gabe is up to.

The video

Real-ity – Got Skillz?

“Behind the scenes, February 2007″

Weekly Song Recommendation: Mark Mallman – Mother Made Me Do It

I haven’t done a music recommendation post in a while.  It’s certainly not weekly, but I’m not changing the naming.  I don’t know, stopped feeling inspired, I guess.

Well fuck if I don’t feel inspired now.

I’ve always been a fan of Mark Mallman’s.  It started, like many of artists I enjoy do, seeing a show of theirs without knowing who they were beforehand.  This is a prime example of the Gabe Kangas music/movie introduction theory.  It is as follows:

Don’t miss the previews.  One of the new movies may be your new favorite movie ever.
Don’t miss the opening act.  You’re going to the show anyway and they may be your new favorite band.
Don’t just go for the opener.  The headliner may your new favorite band.  You’re there anyway.

Simple enough.

That was in Chicago.  Last fall I was in Seattle and Mallman happened to have a show at a club there a night I was free, so of course I went.  Loved it like the first time.  Grabbed the newest cd.

And then all was quiet until this weekend.  Mark Mallman presented Marathon 3: The 78 hour song.

Live from The Turf Club he played music 78 hours straight.  Him, along side his 400 page binder of lyrics he had prepared, rocked it.  The backing band would change every hour, and aside from ~1min bathroom breaks (while the song continued via the band) and the time a doctor pulled him off the stage (he sprained his ankle… and that whole not sleeping for 78hrs thing) he was on stage playing his song.

I can’t really recap it in all its glory, since I wasn’t physically there.  But through the magic of Twitter and the live video stream of the event I was pretty invested.  But if you’re at all interested check out the liveblog via CityPages.  Here’s a photo they took:

But I must say, watching this thing go down was a firsthand ticket to a man’s journey into madness.  While his first couple days of 24/7 rocking looked like they didn’t take a toll on him, this last day I could no longer decipher the genius from the madness.  His banter with the band started to consist of “I weigh 600 pounds, I think I’m going to die.  This isn’t healthy.”  He had a conversation with his dead grandmother.  He talked to his guitar player about going to Bennigan’s to eat, but realized they were out of business.  It just kept getting weirder.  His voice was going out as time went on and I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it the full 78 hours.  I mean, look at the guy.

But he did.  And it was awesome.

So in the honor of a man who when asked why he would do something so crazy replied with “because”, I recommend you check out this song from his “Live from First Avenue” album, the first album of his I got.  I like it because it has that live energy that I experienced this weekend remotely, but… you know, coherent.

If only everyone loved their craft so much they wanted to see what the extreme of it consisted of.

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