summer

something isn't right when you find yourself saying, my God, how am I going to get through the summer?

musicians say it more than most folks. maybe people living in Las Vegas or Durango. maybe people living in Taos or Morrison, tourist havens (like Golden seems to be moving towards becoming.) maybe ski resort business owners, for whom the seasons consist of winter and three weeks in July-August. (I remember a gig in Alma on July 4th that it snowed. what season is it? well, where in Colorado are you?)

I said it in April, May, June, July this year. what do I do? do I cancel all my gigs and sessions? just hang for six months without income or musical joy? how will I get through this summer?

the blessing and curse of these days is that they come and go. and summer is nearly over. and I kind of made it.

today seems particularly fulfilled, particularly healthy, particularly congruent between me and life.

I've been working a lot. too hard. a week ago Saturday, I had off, and just went...I am not only Kentucky Fried, but Extra Crispy. I must not do this to myself.

that was the week before Wednesday - Acoustic reJuveniles rehearsal in the early afternoon, gig with sound with the Modniks at night , Thursday - set up the PA in Golden for Lost Alamos and rehearse all day, Friday - all day rehearsal with Christy and night gig with Lost Alamos, and Saturday - eight hours of Woodstock.

the point is, I'm doing an occasionally adequate imitation of my former self.

I've gone from, how am I going to get through this summer, from dealing with the possibility of losing both singing and playing music from my life, to being able to make some improvemants in the PA, the studio, and the stereo that I have wanted to make for decades. from a threatened global minus to a real solid plus.

it's not entirely objective. I think I needed to do it a little too much. I think I'm enjoying it as I always would have, but with a hurt angry desperate edge as well. I don't have to stay in fear and worry and negativity! I am not helpless! I am not vulnerable! I do have control!

yeah, dream on.

it took the best tricks of a team of geniuses to get me where I am today. a conspiracy of miracles, and the focused will of many caring blog readers to shield me from what could have been.

I refuse to be anything but healthy until I am proven otherwise. but the first scan is going to be at the end of October, just before my birthday. it will be great to have that to celebrate.

but I will have five years of too frequent reminders that I am vulnerable as hell. and even after that, the chance of cancer recurrence doesn't go away any more than the chance of a tree falling on me, or The Eagles doing another album.

I've seen hell freeze over. just like intimacy, living is vulnerability.

but today, only a fool would budget a lot of energy worrying about disaster. the list of things I got through this summer...some with some small amount of style...is striking. and I know a batch of people who, from the start of it through the worst of it, would feel silly grateful to have been me.

I'm one of them.

and from the end of March, if I could have had the Great Editor take these months out of the final cut...I would have insisted on keeping the full director's cut of the movie intact.

a summer that could have ranged from a 7 all the way to a 10 instead had some 3 to 4 areas. but never dipped below the axis.

these days, the kind of thing I enjoyed and got through for awhile, I'm pretty much just enjoying.

Bonnie said, are you going to keep your blog going after you're done being sick?

I've been infrequent in my visits to it, and I kind of apologize. I'm still getting mad pleasure from what I am becoming able to do again, and doing too much of it. in the next months, I'm getting away for awhile with each of the girls...heaven knows they deserve it for what they have been going through, and it won't hurt me a bit. and I'll be trying to keep the musical plates spinning happily on their sticks, like the guy on Ed Sullivan.

but I'll write.

so...what are the other most intelligent things you've ever heard said, Scott?

as if I'd know. "buy Casio stock" in 1965. "invest in Starbucks" in 1992.

but here are some of the ones that get me. no, you won't learn anything about my health in this entry. except, perhaps, mental.

a few from Tom Lehrer, Harvard math professor and genius satirist who released three albums in the 50's and early 60's and has not released an album since.

he was asked why.

"Political Satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize."

he was asked why he doesn't play concerts anymore.

"I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record."

In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them all...but you can't say 'girl.'

Many people today spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if you can't communicate, the very least you can do is to shut up.

Maybe just on the same topic...or maybe just as bright...is what Willis Alan Ramsey, who recorded one record in the early 1970's replied when asked when he was going to record another:

"Why? What was wrong with the first one?"

Not all my faves are cynical. this one is from "Ode to a Grecian Urn", by Keats:

""Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

heavy.

The Thirtieth Anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, in October 1997, was as much poetry as music...what to do while the bands set up...a San Francisco poet named Diane DiPrima said something I'll never forget:

"The only war is the war against the imagination. In that, all other wars are subsumed."

kathy suggests "e=mc squared." that and the double helix, I suppose. but it seems to be getting farther from the category of things I've heard of being said...

what's world class bright about both of those things is genius model construction. we have the data...what model does it suggest about how the world works? to consider the double helix, you have to first visualize it...to find the relationship between the energy given off by matter in an atomic reaction and the constant of the speed of light (squared), you have to first be open to the thought that energy, mass, and the speed of light could be related.

heady stuff. but not a pithy observation about the art of living.

I'm kind of fond of "why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip? to get to the same side."

ok, I'll risk being thought egoistic and obscene to boot (my chances of avoiding so being thought of seem slim anyway) and include my joke about my dad:

when I was 8 years old, my dad said to me,

son, I'm no fool. I know whatever I say, you're going to masturbate anyway.

turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy...

I can't believe a human could write these Tom Verlaine lyrics...he has tons of amazing ones

Janie says her heart is just a watch for telling time

goodbye

her hands upon my face turn these hours into days.

also "watching the corners turn corners"

also "new czar in the nothing regime"

ok, I'll throw in :

"I don't know why you're wishin and hopin'

when we could be kaleidoscopin'"

I'm kind of fond of Richard Thompson's :

"you got to ride out in one direction

until you find the right connection."

I think that justifies all sorts of extremist behavior...

lisa suggests, "War is Over if you Want It"

that is a gift that keeps on giving...

from recent religious works, I like a couple from the Star Wars Episodes 1-3...going for nerd cred here...

"Your focus determines your reality."

and when Qui-Gon, Anakin, and Jar-Jar land on Tattooine and go off into the desert to seek money to repair their space ship (which has always seemed stupid to me...you don't call Yoda and ask him to front you a few francs? you ever seen where those guys live? they must have some money stashed away somewhere...)

anyway, Jar-Jar is afraid of the desert. "oh, no, no, don't go out there, me'sa get robbed and crunched!"

Qui-Gon replies, "Jar-Jar, we don't have anything of value. That's our problem."

ain't perspective a wonderful thing?

I'll make it worse by including a rule I have:

when you're solving a problem and looking for causes, don't forget to consider the things you've been doing to solve the problem.

or, doc, I did what you said and used the leeches, but I still feel tired!

or, I'm taking the Prozac, but I'm still depressed!

there's a case to be made for Frank Zappa's "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."...except that I don't consider that a counter indication. dancing, good. talking, good.

among my wierdest guilty pleasures is watching, and having a fairly complete knowledge of, Friends.

I didn't want to. I've never seen an episode of "The Simpsons" I've seen one episode (twice) of Seinfeld and found no likeable characters either time. I thought Friends would just be 90's yuppie scum pandering.

which it was.

but my girlfriend liked it. so one day when she was not around (I have to have some pride, I suppose) I came in partway throughan episode ,several seasons in. Chandler was moving in with Monica, but she couldn't stand the thought of his barcalounger in her apartment. they fought. hilarity ensued. she saw the light though, and the next time he came over, she had a square taped on the living room floor that signified the only exact place she could stand to envision the chair sitting.

"You know what this means, don't you?", said Monica.

"Oh my God," said Chandler, "they've killed Square Man."

that (and Being John Malkovich) was my introduction to the Gen-X penchant for sideways.

sideways kind of does it for me.

I think it's the first episode where Rachel asks Phoebe to help her move.

she says, "I really wish I could help you out, but...I don't want to."

I think that's one of the dumbest smartest things I've ever heard said.

I count on losing 98% of the readership with this one.

perhaps the second proto-rap record ever made ("Hey, Little Girl" by The Syndicate of Sound being the first) was "Let it All Hang Out" by The Hombres. it had numerous mystical spoken moments ("Saw a man walk upside down, tv's on the blink, made Galileo look like a Boy scout, sorry 'bout that, let it all hang out.")

but the one that puzzled me was, "How does that mess your baby up, leg?"

since I am the person designated to think about these things, as all normal folk have better things to do, I said to myself...what phrase is he thinking of?

how does that mess your mind up, baby?

I can't tell you how many years it's been since I uttered that phrase. more likely to ever have been said by me was Nancy Sinatra's "How Does That Grab You, Darlin'?"...and I don't think I ever said that.

but using lyric calculus, we look for the first derivative which would be:

"how does that mess your baby up, mind?"

which gets us halfway there. and isn't unheard of...I've sung, "Mamas, don't let your Cowboys grow up to be Babies."

but the second derivative could well substitute another body part for "mind":

"how does that mess your baby up, leg?"

it's a Sixties thing. you wouldn't understand. lord knows I don't.

from the Reader's Digest: "Much of what is considered progress is more accurately the passing of various ideas in and out of fashion."

then there are the inadvertent wisdoms of commerce...I was always fond of "See Other Side" - good advice in any situation.

"This Page Left Intentionally Blank"well...it was blank...til you wrote on it...

if I ever join a punk band, I really want it to be called "Intentionally Blank"

Tom Lehrer says his 1040 form had a box mark, if blind, check this box. he always wanted to put a mark about three inches away from it.

the Zen guys do pretty well.

asked the meaning of life, the Master replied, "when hungry, eat; when tired , sleep."

I could see where the acolyte might want his money back...but...if you can eat and do nothing else while you do it, sleep and rest during it...live in the present, without acting out past conditioning...you've got a lot going for you

I like David Wilcox's, "If you come upon me neck deep in quicksand, before you try to help me, ask me if I'm done yet."

more me...the glory of a blog...

"Pathology is a sane response to an insane situation."

finally (really?) I remember coping with existentialism in college...those funsters have some words too..."hell is other people" and all...I remember my friend Dave in the 60's saying to me, "Life is meaningless" and me saying, "so what?"

...and wondering if there had been a definitive philosophical pendulum swing against the existentialists yet.

not sure there has been. but I don't think it's too wrong to think of the fifties rockers as Essentialists. it was in rock and roll I found my answer to what was taught to me as Existentialism...certainly having to contain the most intelligent things I've ever heard said.

I love what I love in such an immediate way, in heart and stomach, that larger questions just don't come up about it. and I think that was best expressed by Prof. Emeritus Richard Penniman in his definitive masterwork when he said,

"A Wop Bop A Lu Bop A Lop Bam Boom!"

new patient admissions

it's been two weeks and two days since I completed radiation!!

two weeks and two days!!

ok, ok, I admit it: I am so not back.

I've been scheduling like old Scott, the hundred percenter. no days off, two a day from time to time.

it's so rewarding.

last night, I put all the latest PA (live concert sound) stuff I've been getting and getting done to the test. did sound for The Modniks.

as if the world had not given me enough bounty by having the sixties band I always wanted in The ReJuveniles, with people I love dearly and would take a bullet for, I've somehow also found my way to this totally different sixties band with a John-Paul-George-Ringo like cast of equally loveable and compelling personalities.

bar gigs with them, for basically no money and next to no audience adulation, where I would do sound and wrestle endlessly with nightmarish stuff, ending up exhausted, were still on the short list of things to live for.

it was Bob's idea that The Modniks needed a parks and rec friendly demo, to shop when he was at places representing his other band, The Beloved Invaders, a compelling surf instrumental band with compulsive accuracy and ability. a demo that would show our willingness to wimp up, and play the most accessible stuff.

I put together a basic template for it, and Bob and Sandy tweaked it; I recorded it at my house.

there are oldies bands in Denver. not so many comprised of actual oldies, though. (one, by residence location, a Golden oldie) they are comprised of young people, with better voices and strong mainstream musical talent and good looks. they bravely confront the task of finding the songs to best showcase that musical ability and cranking them out one more time, with professionally generated passion (though, really, that never was their music.)

they don't do "Hang On Sloopy". who in their right minds would do "Hang On Sloopy"??

we do. dammit. and we are flat out tickled on the off chance we play it right and it actually sounds good.

the wimpy parks and rec Modniks, with a sit down acoustic guitar player, is something we all set out to do. but I was a lot of the push behind it.

and part of my idea was...if the band could actually hear themselves, if the audience got something more resembling musicians playing than concert sound, if it was that music in that configuration with that clarity...well, if listeners could resist that, I'd need to check into DeVry university for a new career.

the demo magically got us a dozen gigs this summer. just in time for my voice to go missing.

last night, to me, was the best live sound I've ever heard anywhere.

I'm still working on it. but my goofy cross between audiophile and PA did what I've always wanted it to.

and the audience really really liked it.

I had some restaurant food last night, often a sleep interrupter for me...I celebrated with some sugar free soda that was still plenty sweet. but I think I'm up because I'm excited. two things I have wanted all my life to do got done.

it's like being in a car with your buds and saying, I think I can get us home. turn here, keep going, this next street is it.

if the car trip lasted several years.

when home comes into sight...you feel like you did ok to sign up as the navigator.

I'm wiped.

setting up sound is a campaign. physically and mentally.

and I'm doing sound again tonight.

it's a week back, and three days forward, til I get a day off. I love it all.

but I admit it. I'm wiped. and my voice, which is starting to get some power back, ain't keeping it for long.

neck is better every day. shoulder too. but they hurt.

taste coming back into my mouth slowly. though, as I say, my reputation isn't built very strongly on taste.

all the side effects...dry mouth, sore throat...still there, in succeedingly less virulent versions of themselves.

but, as a patient, I must make this new admission...what I ain't is all the way back.

what I also ain't, though, is in the boat of many many patients you and I both know, who pray daily to be half as lucky as I am and have been. and many who have not the immaculate fortune to have a support system as caring and deep as the gentle readers of this blog.

I feel like, if Einstein had had this group of people sending out a vanguard of will, making an easier path for me through my life like the lead bird in the chevron creating the waves that make it easier to fly along the V shape, he would have lived long enough to finish the Unified Field Theory. (which briefly and inaccurately stated, would have said not only are energy and matter related, but Everything is Everything)

The Beatles hated their concert recordings. they couldn't hear, so they couldn't play to their standards. The Beach Boys struggled throughout their career to show a large group of people what they had done in a studio. CSN sing like no one else, but live they couldn't hear, and couldn't manifest in a stadium what they did in a studio.

concert sound is big. biiiiiiiig. and it features actual bass frequencies, which most people never get to hear.

the size of the bass is how most concert sound guys measure the wonderfulness of their rig. never mind that you can't understand a word being sung. and the volume is a harsh huge transistor radio, and anyone with a $200 stereo gets better sound at home than they get in the $250 a ticket seats.

so...what up with that?

I have theories.

you take a wall mounted loud studio monitor that gives incredibly exacting sound to the best clients in the world, put two thousand of those monitors in a small amphitheatre, and the sound immediately sucks.

what's the difference?

concert sound guys put a high premium on reliability. who wouldn't, in their shoes? if the amps, speakers, mics sound good...hey, that's great...but one that sounds half as good and breaks half as often is going to be better. the "standard of the industry" in concert sound is not the best, the latest, the most accurate, but what people are used to, what has always (never) worked.

the idea that studio guys, hi fi guys, and concert sound guys all have the same goal...to reproduce sound accurately...seems to be my idea alone. mostly those three sects avoid any interaction with each other, like each was the Brahmin and the others untouchable.

but that's not the big reason, in my dreams, that concert sound sucks.

I think the big reason is half a mile of cable.

you have to put the sound guy halfway back in the audience. you haaaaave to.

at Red Rocks...try walking from the mic on the stage to the sound booth. I mean, granted , it's uphill. but you'll be winded. at least, I was.

every mic cable goes all the way out there. all the way across a forty foot stage, then all the way out.

and the mixed sound comes all the way back.

then the amplifiers are onstage...you wouldn't hoist all that weight...and the speakers are, what would you say, thirty feet high?

what if you spend a million dollars on a PA, to preserve the nature of the sound, and connect it up with industry standard sub-Radio Shack cable?

half a mile of it?

when copper forms, it forms in crystals. there are 700 crystals in a foot of copper cable. every time a signal goes from one crystal to another, it is like adding a transistor to the electronics.

(and they form out, in one direction. so every cable sounds a little better when the signal flows in the direction the copper grew, a little worse going against traffic.)

half a mile later, the best board in the world won't do you any good.

now, I am not so all fired convinced that you haaaave to put the sound booth in the middle halfway back. but if there's one place in the venue the sound sounds good, it's right there. it's a good plan to buy tickets right in front of the sound booth.

but what if, in this age of computers, the mixer itself (often digital) were sitting under the middle of the stage, and the computer that tells the mixer what to do were halfway back?

no more half mile of mic cable.

with venues as small as I play, the Red Rocks model doesn't account for much of what we know as shitty small PA sound.

those aren't usually million dollar boards in those systems, or studio monitor speakers, either.

I like my board, my monitor speakers, my antique eq's.

and I face constant pity and contempt for the AudioQuest cables I buy to hook it all together. poor deluded soul. he'll never be a Sound Man. hell, just give me a coupla JBL's, some SM57's, and a Crown amp and I'll be rocking and rolling all night long.

yeah. I've been there. I've heard it.

my main PA cables are silver, instead of copper. they are a meter, some a meter and a half tops. and one crystal of AudioQuest Perfect Surface Silver is 700 feet long.

yes, three feet of cable makes that much difference.

so I feel like my well wishing praying support system network has given me enough extension on my time on earth to have proved out my Unified Field Theory, that concert/ studio/ home stereo sound is really one quest, and that each has something to improve the other.

so I'm excited when I should be sleeping. and wiped. maybe the lone side effect of the Joy Weapon.