featuring Woody (acoustic guitar) and 5-Track (acoustic guitar)

1A

3

1B

click here to listen:
http://www.archive.org/details/5-Track2010-03-05.VientoYAguaglassgoblins

For the evening of March 4 we assembled a group including Jef Hogan (electric bass), Jon Franco (drums), Jennifer Ng (percussion), Woody (acoustic guitar) and myself (acoustic wah-wah guitar).

I had one rehearsal with Jef and John (who also play bass and drums for Greg Franco’s Rough Church), one run-through with Woody, and a loose jam with Jennifer, in the few days before the show. Many of the band members had not met each other until they arrived at the venue. This is less unusual for me than might be suspected.

Viento y Agua in Long Beach is a “coffee house” with wonderful energy, constantly changing art on the walls, the occasional model skeleton, many books, and a warm and inviting stage (and sound system) which was conceived and assembled by Angie Evans. I’ve played a few shows there, by myself and also with Cricket and with Amanda, and every time I’ve felt good and played well.

This was the first time I’d played some of this material in a long time, and the first time I’d ever played some of it with a band. The two acoustic guitars kept the energy closer to the ground than usual, and the songs and improvs worked together for a change instead of fighting for space. The existence of dual percussionists also contributed to the effortless momentum of this group’s sound. We had momentum without frightful velocity.

Good show. Hope we do it again.

Today is back to the studio with Rough Church. We have four more songs to record, plus a soundscape. It’s raining, so I’m feeling Seattle, which ought to be right for these tunes … one is a punky cover from New Zealand, two are moody electric guitar grooves slid back behind the beat, one is (sort of) in the style of a 1950s-r&b throwback, there’s a little acoustic guitar duo tune (it’s part A of one of the grooves) and then the soundscape, which will be noise and found sound, so all in all a Seattle-y batch of material. I’ve even got plans involving droning open tunings.

Which reminds me, my earlier report that spring had arrived on January 30th has borne fruit … almost a month later we have flowers blooming and birds singing (and it’s raining for the 2nd time this month) … and I ran into a Southern California native who agrees (volunteers, even) that Los Angeles has distinct weather, you just have to know where to look … she hipped me to a day to watch for in the fall, weather-wise, and I will report on that when it comes around.

I’m doing some work for a friend.

It’s unusual work, for me, lately. I am proof-reading a forthcoming book release for Tarpaulin Sky. I used to do this with my own work, with that of my friends, and once with a lengthy book in the true crime genre, written by my father, which is called Stalemate. But it’s been a while since I did all that. I don’t try to publish my own writing, when there is any, and besides I would probably ask Zinnia to do the proofreading if I had any that needed to be done.

I am enjoying the work. Partly, because it is interesting work. Editing. Spotting the flaws in something and getting rid of them so it can be what it set out to be. Partly, because it is an interesting book. More on that later, when it is out and you can buy it and find out for yourself. Let’s say it this way: I am not sure that I would have read this book were I not proofreading it. But I am glad that I am reading it, and I would recommend this book to anyone that likes innovative, strange, or offbeat short fiction that is not entirely abstract or deliberately nauseating.

But I’m not going to tell you what it is. Not until it is out, and you can buy it and find out for yourself.

*

Meanwhile, I am recording an album with a band called Rough Church. Rough Church is led by Greg Franco. Greg plays the guitar, writes songs, and sings. He’s been doing this for years. We met sometime last year and he asked me to play with his band and help record their new album. I said OK. The other band members are Jef Hogan (bass) and Jon Franco (drums). Jon and Greg are cousins.

We’re recording in Echo Park, which is where I live, which is very convenient. We rehearse in Washington Heights, which is further away but not prohibitively so. Greg has a nice place with a fine view and the air up on his hill is always clear.

The engineer working on the album, in whose studio we are recording, is brilliant. He is doing amazing work. I can barely think sometimes because my ears are so finely tuned and Andrew Bush (the engineer) has ears which are even more finely tuned than my own. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s had his own studio for time which can be measured in decades (at least one-and-a-half of them, I believe) and he knows how to get great sounds out of it.

He also knows how to nudge sounds around digitally to make a better take out of a few not so good ones. This is probably a good skill to have, and he is applying it effectively with us, but I also feel that this is a good skill not to overuse. I am not saying that Andrew overuses this skill, and in fact his results so far with Rough Church have been brilliant. I have no complaints. But I am keeping an eye.

Greg thinks that Andrew made some minor digital changes in one of my guitar solos on one of our songs. I have mixed feelings about this. If I played badly but he liked the ideas and thinks he can make something good out of them, then I am all for it. But if I played something deliberately and well that just sounds a little off to finely-tuned ears (and I am wont to do such a thing as that) then I want to hear it the way I played it.

I have listened to the track where Greg says this happened, before and after versions, and I don’t hear the difference. I will ask Greg to point it out to me, and if I hear a problem I will make a note of it. But on fairly close listening I don’t hear it, myself.

*

So what Andrew appears to have done, if anything, is a bit like what I am doing: proofreading.

When a writer (or a guitar player) likes to work in a style that is not specifically normal all the time, then it is not always apparent where a comma should go, or whether or not a musical phrase is off-time.

Proofreading. A word which sounds to me increasingly like a stifled sneeze. I have to get familiar enough with the writer’s style to know when she meant to do things a certain way and when she just got excited and distracted by what she was writing and overlooked a few details.

With any luck, Andrew is doing the same thing with my guitar solos. And with any luck, he and I are both good enough at our jobs to know how to leave it alone when it should be left alone and also to make the correct changes when necessary to bring out the purest possible flowering of the artist’s original intent.

I am not used to having my guitar solos proofread. I would think that a writer would be more comfortable with this, as it goes with the territory pretty much from day one. Then again, even as a writer I have had my issues with proofreaders. I often feel that they do not understand me or my intentions. I don’t think there’s a good or bad to it, but regardless of whether I am writing or playing the guitar, I think one of my aims would have to be to do it well enough in the first place that proofreading is unnecessary.

It rained again, less dramatically, for a couple-few days. No tornadoes, little in the way of mudslides, the mania all wrought out in the first go rounds.

It was a spring rain. It was a subtle difference. It had less of a density to it, not so much in the way of sodden snowpants and slightly more along the line of still-wearing-those-wet-clothes-are-you?

Then it got clear, like it does. Best air here is right after a rain. I go outside just to breathe.

It got hot. I had heard it was going to, and then it happened, in the middle of the night. I could tell cos I woke up sweaty and had to take some clothes off. Sure sign of a heat wave.

And the next two days of February in southern California were as hot as Vermont ever gets in July (maybe a couple of hotter days in August). The heat was nice – got my first light sunburn of the year, it passed quickly when I applied Aloe, or Arnica, or Something – but also a reminder that it ONLY GETS HOTTER FROM HERE, HA HAAAAA!!!

Then two days that could be described as relatively cool (even bordering on chilly on at least one evening) and now it is raining again.

A return to the One.

Here’s a link to mp3 samples from a slew of cassette-and-CDR releases from the microlabel Boondock Pissoir, including stuff from the Second Family Band, Vosellglaas, and others:

http://soundcloud.com/boondockpissoir/sets

You can dig the Pissoir’s homeblog here:

http://boondockpissoir.blogspot.com/

enjoy,

5

More information about this track (including Album Cover Art) can be experienced at

www.marccantlin.com

specifically at the February 13 2010 entry

… lyrics available here

I have been reading this:

Body Language, by Mark Cunningham

It’s the kind of language play that I like to make Lady Z read for voiceover practice, or to look at on airplanes, or to read out loud to unsuspecting visitors over tea and psychedelic music. I think stuff like this is a hoot, though the humor that I see is often not so much in what is being said as it is in the way it is being said.

In this case, the language is organized according to body parts on the one hand and, I believe, letters and numbers on the other. (It’s a 2-sided book, y’unnerstand.)

I’m not sure I always agree with the perspective being expressed - in that I’m often not entirely sure what the perspective is that is being expressed - but the use of words is really delicious (the way it is being said, again). I’m taking it slow, about 40 pages into the BODY half (and it’s taken me a month or more to get there) but I’m already enjoying revisiting certain bits as I flip through looking for the place where I left off, or trying to determine which half of the book is which.

Click here for more
information about Mark Cunningham’s Body Language
directly from the mouth of the publisher,
which is to say:
Tarpaulin Sky Press

dig it,
5

** NOTE: I am so far enjoying the LANGUAGE or “Primer” half of this book somewhat more than I did the BODY half … perhaps it is the subject matter? The style is equally compelling, but the content is less gooshy and somewhat less fatalistic (or so it seems to me … perhaps it is merely less inspiring of fatalism in my particular psyche? a question best left to the experts …) Whatever, “Primer” rocks.

Food On Earth Bumper Sticker

In case the pic is too small for yer eyes, what this bumper sticker says on it is:

“HOW MUCH OF YOUR FOOD ORIGINATES ON EARTH?”

… just like on the inside of the “Backatcha, Pod People!!” cd-r.

It comes in a 10.5 x 3.5 size, and costs $5.00

serve and enjoy,
5-Track