6/27/05

But probably the most peculiar arrangement for the ritual recitation of airborne compression waves I've managed to embed myself with has been that redoubtable duo, that eccentric partnership known as Snake Suspenderz.

Not to mention one of the lowest-rent. Howlin' Hobbit and my firmly-inflated self play pretty much anyplace they don't chase us out of that has even the faintest whiff of profit wafting on the breeze. Thus explaining what we were doing in an empty cafe in Duvall Washington, spanking away at crosseyed old novelty material while the parade went by -- literally. It was a classic example of the famed Disappearing Audience Trick, as performed by the brightest lights of variety entertainment and us too. When we got there the place was packed, but by the time we'd set up all our gimcrack paraphernalia and sat down to play, we were alone in a lonely world.

It wasn't a total bust -- we got fed. And we got a chance to watch a good ol' faux country small town Duvall Days(tm) parade, complete with firetrucks and skiploaders and marching bands and The Duvall Auxiliary Girl's Varsity Cute Uniform And Doodad Team and funky old cars lovingly dehistorified by their doting owners, honking madly each in their own distinct voice and cadence.

Along in there someplace came an entry from a local Christian school, a repro miniature hay wagon drawn by a thoroughly practical miniature tractor instead of a hayburning manure spreader, inhabited by several scenic bales and somebody's darling children dressed in spotless and uncomfortable-looking outfits right out of Tom Brown's School Days. On the high-gloss synthetic-finish slat sides of the wagon was the name of the school and the slogan "Yesterday's Values -- Today's Technology."

I'm sure the author of that particular tag-line was as devoid of conscious irony as a third-grade book report, meaning only to convey in tight prose the essential features of the educational establishment in question. But if there ever was a gravestone put up for the altogether too clever for their own good human race, that phrase would make a durn good epitaph -- pithy, stern, implacable and deadly accurate.

When I was young and isolated and uncommonly devoted to trivial matters like popular genre fiction, I moved heaven, earth and my mommy's wallet to attend a weekend retreat hosted by some classic liberal group, a chance for Young People to Expand Their Horizons, probably only enough to include the nearest edifice of the Modern Historical View. I could've cared less about expanding my horizons. My needs were simple, my wants were few. I just wanted to see and hear their featured speaker, the classic science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

Happy the young person with few wants. My desire was satisfied most thoroughly. The Great God Bradbury did tread the boards of the dinky little conference room riser and deliver a stirring if somewhat unstructured address on the state of things, including the socio-historical observation, "God bless the atomic bomb. It's made war impossible."

His meaning, of course, was simple enough: having developed weapons powerful enough to wipe themselves clean off the planet, along with most of the rest of the biosphere, h. sapiens was thereby constrained to actually attempt to get along -- because the alternative was unthinkable. More generally, he was positing the existence of mechanical morality, of truths of character and temperament inherent in the structure of technological artifacts.

Subsequent history has demonstrated amply that Ray was, let us put this tastefully, a little off the mark with this concept. With some notable counter-examples (Stanislav Petrov, the Man Who Saved The World, comes to mind), not too many people in positions of button-pushing power have displayed all that much nuance about the possible slippery slope of what is laughingly called "limited" warfare. The undeniable damper that ol' party-pooping Mister Atom Bomb (need a shave, dude?) puts on international dispute ends just a baby step back from the Abyss. Worse, for newer members of Club Bomb, the simple all-annihilating truth of Siva, Destroyer of Worlds seems to be buried under a pile of nationalist or theocratic horsecrap. Yesterday's Values, forsooth.

But there's no denying that the bogus haywagon of history is being dragged along by shiny new tractors of any number of technologies, be they the cassette tapes that helped spark the Iranian revolution, the videos so beloved of Al Qaida, cell phones, personal computers, the jolly jolly internet or even the slightly antique but still relentlessly scary B-B-Bomb. What all these trinkets and toys seem to have going is the same thing tools have always had: a method of obtaining advantage. At a price.

I've often felt that the Devil would have a hard time getting anybody to sell their soul, given that even offering such a deal points up an actual proof of existence of the whole Heaven-Hell-Afterlife contraption, the doubting of which is the only reason why any good Xtian or Muslim or whichwhat would be willing to consider such a deal in the first place. I mean, forget the goody-goody stuff -- this is eternity we're talking about. And you want me to trade that for -- what? being King Of The World? For, like, fifty years? Wow, where do I sign?

Ultimately, the only pointy-haired boss we ever make a deal with is in ourselves. It's just that some devils are more attractive than others, shaplier, more enticing demons luring us to trash our social order for the sake of a little temporary bling. And in the absence of proof of any extradimensional salvation, we're faced with the only practical morality such choices leave us: grow up or blow up.

So maybe Ray's right. That would be nice.

6/20/05

I spent most of last week in another time.

It was all my own fault -- I should be more careful fiddling around with my computers. But when you're trying to stretch RAM to support three different machines, there's bound to be a little case cracking and chip swapping. And, in this case, adapter tearing.

I have an 8100/80, a machine that saw its salad days back in the first Clinton administration. Sporting an 80 MHz 601 processor and nubus expansion slots, it was four years old and already obsolete when I picked it up in a neighborhood yard sale. But for me, graduating from a Quadra 610, it was a wonder of the modern age. Suddenly I could actually use software I'd had around for years, and the sight of the old v 3.0 AOL browser popping open practically instantaneously was a revelation of what computing was really about.

My productivity flowered. Multitrack digital recordings and complex graphics fairly leaped from the screen. The internet was my playground. Slowly I increased my RAM and hard drive capacities. I upgraded to System 8.1, and actually saw a speed bump.

Then, in the millennium spirit of Y2K, I decided to add a G3 card. Needless to say, I was impressed. My productivity jumped again. More RAM! More hard drive! System 8.6! A cable modem! I was actually approaching the power levels of 21st century computing.

My decision to upgrade to a 500 Mhz processor card was probably more vanity than sound thinking -- I'd only get a 75% or so improvement, which might well be offset by the snail's pace of the processor bus, still in the era of Sen. Bob Dole and Michael Spindler. But I was power hungry. I wanted all the zoom I could get. As soon as Sonnet announced another of its periodic price drops, I ordered.

This time, though, the speed came at a price. Immediately upon rebooting with the faster upgrade, I began having a series of glitches and crashes, all reported as errors of type -1, -2 or -3. Something, it seemed, was unhappy with 480 MHz, something involving memory. I consulted other Mac wizards, but all they could suggest was bad RAM, a lame excuse at best.

At the same time, I'd resurrected my old Q 610 as a dedicated sampler server in my recording setup. I had over 200 Megs of memory under the hood of my recalcitrant Ferarri and proposed to steal some to prop up the Quadra. Upon reassembling the 8100 after surgery, I was greeted with the dreaded blank screen. Investigation revealed that in my enthusiasm I'd torn the brittle video adapter linking its original AV card to the upgrade (something Sonnet doesn't warn you about). That I'd found the source of my persistent crashes was cold comfort. The Ferarri was back in the Clone Age, reduced to a bicycle.

I couldn't believe what foul performance I'd settled for before I upgraded. Surfing the net, even with a cable modem, was a disaster. All the newer better cooler upgraded browser software was as graceful as an arthritic elephant at 80 Mhz. My audio software ran so slowly I could see windows redraw. I only tried to use Photoshop 5 once.

[narrative ends] ***

I hate to admit it, but the joys of upgrade are starting to pall. It's not that I don't like amping up my information engines -- far from it. I've always taken a certain delight in bipassing the planned obsolescence of bitbiters, depriving the usurious manufacturers of the hard and the soft their ill-gotten profits. Couldn't happen to a nicer industry. Recycling trailing edge is a highly moral and evolutionary undertaking.

The problem is that I myself have started to plateau. When I first started using personal computers back in those long gone halcyon days of the '80's, the field was, shall we say, a trifle undeveloped. My lack of pelf and surplus of spare time mapped a strategy of utilizing Yesterday's Technology Today, repurposing supposedly obsolete equipment for low rent income purposes, busily and happily converting other people's daydreams and dirty underwear into vendible products. Biz biz busy, hap hap happy.

In the end (now) I've become the proud possessor of all that I had ever dreamed of in the way of Frankensteined binary weaponry -- the multitrack digital audio studio, the color printer, the stacks of peripherals, the electronic orchestra. And it's the Twilight Zone episode of the man in Hell who can't lose at cards. It's all I ever wanted, and now I'm fresh out of desires. My urge to improve is slaked, satiated. I've got a big suspicious bulge in my midsection, and if you don't mind I think I'll just go take a nap.

This may be more symptomatic of my age than any particular loss of forward motion in the computer world. When first I started messing, simply messing around with pc's, I was in my 30's, life was bright and new, I thought in terms of someday and when I get to it and my fabulous career. Now, in my early-mid-50's (oh, there's a sorry fudge!), I'm more inclined to weep with nostalgia than laugh with anticipation. Life is but a dream -- a long, dull recurring one.

Perhaps there's hope. Some new toy could come down the chute and blow me away again, some incomprehensible innovation might turn the entire show on its head. It could happen. It will happen. But in my present state of mind, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

(Footnote: This past week, after writing the above, I got involved in a project of Sandahbeth's, a sign for street performers that says "Please tip for photographs" -- in about twelve languages. Swell idea, and between installing world language packs on my Mac and exploring the intricacies of web translation sites, I've actually been enjoying learning something new about computers. So I guess it's not so black after all -- )

6/13/05

No matter how you come to the discipline, though, there's sure to be one common denominator: it's gonna be hard. You'll sweat nails and tiny crustaceans over every rhyme, every rhythm, every turn of phrase and point of narration, every wheel and tread of the words and every bend and dip of the melodic road they ride. And then you'll have to go step into the box and pit your gem against ten thousand other contenders, every one of em with blood in their eye and fire in their gut. And even if you do emerge, battered but victorious, with a successful work, you'll just have to go back and start over tomorrow. Songwriting: it ain't for sissies.

For all but a lucky handful, songwriting is, to quote from another context, "Just a goddam hobby." All the talent, hard work and determination in the world won't get you in the door of the golden sphinx of show biz success. Even President Coolidge's vaunted perseverance doesn't further -- just because you never heard of the ten zillion guys and gals who persevered and still failed doesn't mean they aren't out there.

Down to down, it's just a crap shoot. Just luck. Luck alone is the magic key, the secret handshake, the shibboleth.

Oh, and good ol' favoritism. Mustn't forget that. Going in Through The Bathroom Window isn't the most common way to make it in music, but it's number two -- and there isn't much of any number three. Nepotistic assistance usually reduces to luck too, an accident of birth or acquaintance, except in the cases of those, um, ambitious individuals of limited connection who intrepidly set out, straw in hand, looking for Vonnegut's money river.

Naturally, those of us who aren't (quite) as dubiously self-motivated find considerable distaste in the whole process. On a bad day, we might even be classed as cranky over it. And on a really bad day, we might be tempted to dismiss the entirety of the music business in the manner of the To-Remain-Nameless Famous Person who picked me up hitchhiking once back in my youthful stupid days: "It's rotten clear through and there's nothing good about it."

Which circuitous route brings me to that paragon of lyrical flow and euphony, that beacon of poetic light in the dark nights of our 21st century souls, the honorable Orin Hatch. Yes, the senior senator from Utah, friend to the RIAA, author of the INDUCE copyright bill, the utterer of those immortal words of moral certainty, "Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life," is also a songwriter. Whoda thunk it?

And not just a backyard wordchucker or tunemonger, not a basement Bacharach, but a recorded, a produced and released songwriter. Yes, classics like "Let the Eagle Soar" (a spirited defense of American values, especially those regarding the military) and "Heal Our Land" (as performed at the second Bush inaugural) have been graced by the full press Nashville Sound treatment, that patent compounding of microtome-accurate instrumentalism and vocalization with digital audio technology straight off the starship Enterprise that has played Helen to launching a thousand hits.

Not for money alone is this sort of privilege bequeathed. It doesn't hurt, though: in an interview on the late, somewhat-lamented Tavis Smiley show, Big Orrie admitted he was a hundred grand out of pocket on the project. You might assume, fat cat politician that he is, that sums like that are chump change, but you'd be wrong, so terribly terribly wrong. The rich and powerful count their change even more anally than the creepiest coffee-cup begger stirring ther motley crew of nickels and dimes. No, this is no mere whim, not a "vanity" (ptooie!) project -- this is an investment, a studied, calculated financial move into the arts market. This guy means business.

Increasingly, creative work of any profile at all is industrial in nature, no matter how small and personal the source. Big Art, be it books, records, movies, theater or live music, is a poker table requiring players to bring virtually unlimited stakes if they want to even sit down. Naturally, this leaves a heavy advantage to those whom God and commerce have blessed with oversized wallets in the first place.

And the very glamour of the arts, its intellectual, creative and emotional cache, its sweet breath of acclaim and immortality, draws the rich to its fires equally with the poor. The only difference is, wealth can afford addictive intoxication, along with the detox that it regularly requires. The cliffs of show biz are strewn with the dismembered corpses of luckless chumps who just knew they were the next big thang and lived (barely) long enough to learn otherwise. When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long and you think that artistic success is only for the lucky and the strong, you'd have to add "and the loaded" as well.

As they buy up the waterfront property, the pristine wilderness, Board Walk and Park Place (with two hotels), the Big Guys are also moving in on celebrity and stardom. The society page is no longer enough: Madam Tutu wants the cover of Rolling Stone -- and she can spring for it, too. Paris Hilton and her ilk look to be the future of entertainment. And why not? Talent has never been a big part of fame. Why should anything change now?

And hey, if you're one of the luckless mob, the talented but unconnected, don't worry -- there's always American Idol. Ain't democracy grand?

6/6/05

Okay, I'm all right now. Yeah. Whew. Three freakin years of life in the 21st century. Historical document? I sure hope not. Personal chronicle? Maybe. But definitely, definitely a triumph of quantity over quality. Happy anniversary to me. And to you too, gentle readers. Like they say on Cartalk, you've wasted a perfectly good three years doing whatever it was you were up to while I was up to no good in or out of the webpages of this virtual rag.

I feel behooved on this momentous occasion to perform some magnificent Magnificat or other, drawring upon the powah of three and all that, obviously a chance to spout off on the tenuous importance of some splinter issue associated with my endless on-line boulder-roll. But somehow, just another essay from El Lay (que no, ese?) doesn't quite cut the quintessential cookie.

Free association ain't gonna fly either.

So. Hey. Hi there. Let's recap. I'm Thaddeus Spae. I'm 50something, I live in a little house with a big yard in West Seattle, Washington (y'all come! Mi casa es the bank's casa but you're cordially invited to hang out too). I'm a musician and audio recording guy (I hesitate to say engineer) and self-styled graphic designer and CD manufacturer and handyman and writer and muttonfingered speculator in a half dozen semi-intellectual and creative directions. I have a house full of instruments and enough work to pay the mortgage. Barely. Usually.

I have a bad case of the unspecified spiritual devotions, though that seems to be in remission this week. Usually I'm all about unscrewing the inscrutable and deciphering the whichness of what, but recently I've been having long unpleasant conversations with the ghost of Jean Paul Sartre. He may be right, but I don't have to like it. Neither does he.

I reckon it has to do with my age. Nothing to worry about. It'll pass presently, one way or another. In the meantime, I write a lotta grumpy songs and play church music to cheer up. That and eat St. John's Wort and strong vitamins.

In times past I played jazz and blues and swing with my wife Sandahbeth as the cryptically titled duo Amber Tide and lived wild on the highways of our land, but in the last ten years she's gotten more and more physically disabled and we've moved from van and trailer to RV to doublewide to Boeing bachelor bungalow, all at the behest of love sweet love and medical necessity, and here we are.

Here we are.

Snug as a bug in a rug.

We still play music together.

During the mid 90's I started a weekly bulk email to friends and acquaintances that I called the Thaddeus Gazette, just a periodic essay about whatever was going on in my life or my head, a way of keeping in touch with people I cared about using this new-fangled interweb thingie. I did it for a couple years and got busy and burned out and mostly quit. Then in 2002, with my situation somewhat more stablized, I went back to it, this time with a website.

I never tried to implement the feedback features of ordinary blogs, guestbooks or forums or comments or the like, partly because I'm too lazy, partly because I don't have the server space and partly because I don't have the time to edit and police them. This isn't a commercial site (okay, there's the Gift Shop -- which ain't exactly commercial either *badabump*) and I'm not trying to drive traffic or attract eyeballs or prove my 1337 skillz or any of that web-culture stuff. I'm not sure it even qualifies as a blog -- it's not that evolved. An amphibian to the dinosaurs of today, protoblogeops thaddispamus perhaps.

In any event, now I'd like to shamelessly exploit this triennial opportunity to elicit responses from the great Out There about what (if anything) this pile of underedited magilla cream custard means to you, my presumably-loyal listeners. I'm not looking for a hundred words, or even ten. I'm not needing to be stroked.

No, I take that back. I'm rotten ready to be stroked senseless. Who isn't?

But I'm really more innerested in your gut responses, first thoughts, unconscious reactions, knee-jerk reflexive Tourette's syndrome core-dumps.

See, I figure this careless word-river I've been spewing out over the last 36 months is as close to a portrait of my wunnerful wunnerful self as I'm ever likely to produce. Hidden in this mangy magic mountain is everything I ever/never wanted to know about sincerely etc. but was afraid to ask. But I can't perceive it, not the way it looks to someone who isn't between my ears. if I'm ever gonna get a chance to know know know me, the imperfect dark mirror of your contemplation, dear friends and companions of the Great Illusion, constitutes the main Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring, the Cliff's Notes for this literary kirilian photograph I've managed, against all odds and nothing aforethought, to disgorge.

Another reason to slip me an electron or trillion: lame as it sounds, I've actually lost track of some of your identities, email addresses being as cryptic as they are. If all you did was drop me a line and tell me your name and city, I'd be grateful -- and I wouldn't ceaselessly spam you with tales of Amber Tide gigs in exotic places you're unlikely to get anywhere near.

Unless you want me to, o'course.

Write me at: tspae@tspae.com

Please.

Thank you.