05 01 08 9:56 |No comments yet And the winner is...

We are! After 48 hours of blood, sweat, and tears, we took home the best film award in The 48 Hour Film Project for Philadelphia! Our team, No Right Return
, was made up of Center City Film and Video Employees and their friends and family. 15 of us put in a heck of a lot of work over the course of the weekend to create "Kitchen Aide :  A tale of domestic harmony", a 7 min film about loss and recovery. Chrissy and I were honored to work with such an amazing bunch of creative friends.

So glad to be able to incorporate a few Middlehill songs (thanks Brad and Ben) and a song by The Classic Brown (thanks Staci and Dave) into the film. Check out Staci Brown's myspace over there. She's amazing.

Special thanks to Jordan and the CCFV family for hiring all of us in the first place and granting us access to CCFV's amazing resources. Also, a big thanks to  Mark and xlntads.com for sponsoring the project. And, thanks to the 44 other teams that submitted films to the Project. It's excellent to see so much talent in the city we love to call home.

Click here to download the .wmv file of the movie.

04 14 08 12:17 |No comments yet The Black Blood of the Earth

Very much enjoyed the opening of Ryan Widger's new work at Kelly Webster inthe Crane Arts Building on Thursday night. I like feeling like I'm seeing something I may not be supposed to see. I feel like I'm getting away with something in front of these pictures. Really enjoyed the evening, which included a teriffic dinner at [[tt:Tinto. Kick ass dining area in front of the open kitchen. Well priced drinks, carefully selected chef's tasting menu. We'll be back there, despite some frites that were salty enough to make my eyes water. Working on 2 new super secret projects. But you didn't hear it from me. Been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, re-aligning how I organize my to-do lists and calendar. Very cool way to use ann extend an existing organizational system. Turns our our neighbor across the street is a roller-derby gal. Love it. Missing Reel.

03 28 08 09:39 |No comments yet SQUUUUUUEEEEEZZZZEEEE

I'm about to embark on the sound design for a new Sprout daily show. It's three puppets. It's very funny. I'm back to work on my solo record after having to replace my tried and true Apple Cinema Display. First generation, you know, with the ADC connection on it. I put it out in the trash on Wed. Within minutes someone had walked off with it. I wish them all the luck in the world finding a PowerMac with and ADC video card in it or an ADC to DVI adapter. I replaced it with a beautiful HP display, w2207. I've been very impressed with HP stuff recently. The little tx1410 I'm writing this on has been a lot of fun to use and Christina's xw8200 workstation should be a treat when it arrives. It's been easy making the transition to PCs. Especially on the wallet.

Enjoyed a bachelor party last night for Thomas Reynolds. We went to the Philadelphia Gun Club off of the Italian Market. Had a lot of laughs. 12 of us went, clearly with no idea what we were doing. we had a great class with an un-named master of lethal force and shot 9mm and 40 cal. handguns for a few hours. Good times, good times. DONT BE THAT GUY!( the guy that holds the gun wrong and cuts up his han). We weren't that guy. Though Ryan spilled a bit of beer at Triumph in old city afterward. 

Philadephia is gearing up for our crucial primary battle. Everyone I talk to is pretty excited about Obama. Looking forward to the drama on April 22.

03 02 08 1:25 |No comments yet Batches and barrels and quilts

So the mega huge and exciting news of the week is that my lovely wife Christina is back from her two month stint at Sculpture Space!! Two months = 3 pieces of work, 7 poems, 9 models, lots of seitan with studio mate Heather Dewey-Hagborg, almost 60 chilly days in the bustling metropolis that is Utica, or beau-tica, or minu-tica, or nothing-to-do-tica. Great to have her home! I've got photos from her residency at my Flickr page. Over there --->

Meanwhile, my record is coming along nicely. I've got all the ideas together and three songs just about completed. They are taking me in a new direction, which is adding to the complexity of the production, which adds to the time it takes to execute the songs, but they are worth it.  Perhaps I'll tka emy own advice and release 2 EPs  instead of a Full length record. Maybe a part 1 and 2 type of thing. We'll see.  

We attended the 2008 Art Banquet at Scott Kip's artist studios. Great turnout, great food, and a very good Art Swap. I randomly received a 7" Single by Paper Napkin, produced by Jeff Mott. Which is an amazing coincidence as I knew Jeff pretty well at one point and was a fan of his. Very cool. I look forward to checking it out today.

Other news, I'm typing this entry on an HP tx1410 laptop running Vista Home Premium. Yup, I've had to make the switch from Mac to PC for my everyday computing. Still have a kick butt Mac Pro as my workstations at home and the studio, but the network at the new CCFV facility necessitated my getting a PC. It's actually really nice. I'll report more on this later as the glow from a new gadget fades and I start to see it for the pc it is. But so far no problems.

Almost done with the 2 songs I'm producing for Best Wishes, looking forward to getting together with Bradly and Ben for a new recording, dinner with the fam tonight to celebrate Chrissy's return.

02 13 08 12:29 |No comments yet The buzz is slow and low

It's here! It's here! Our new audio post digs at the Comcast Center are here! Center City Film and Video has 2 new audio post suites to compliment the 9 Avid Suites and 2 production studios in our new space on the 24th floor of the Comcast Center. Here's a YouTube of a little walkthrough.Over there too --->>> Recorded the first VO in the booth today. Sounded sweet despite the bangin' and clangin' from the construction above. The whole studio is a twitter with prepping content for Comcast's Management Conference. Big projects, lots of great things happening.

Started another new song last night. "Can't afford to lose" is the title. Some nice country action on it.

I enjoyed a terrific weekend with family. Here's a photo of my niece Lilly and I enjoying brunch on Saturday. She's the best, all smiles and giggles. She is even clapping, almost walking, too. I have a video of her almost gnawing a water bottle in half. Pac Man style. It's great to have family around while Chrissy is away at Sculpture Space. She's doing great by the way, despite the sub zero temperatures and the dryness associated with a wood burning stove.One piece down one more to go. Some very exciting things are happening with her work up there. More info upon her return (too many days and counting!!). Odd how being apart affects us. 

Very excited about how Senator Obama is making out in the primaries. Great to see some real momentum heading in a good direction. I found the Yes We Can music video very moving. There I said it. I also liked "We are Marshall". Darn, perhaps too much information for the web...

01 24 08 11:33 |No comments yet It's a spontaneous thing

Today I had the pleasure of working with Sean, a new host of the Sunny Side Up Show on PBS kid's Sprout. We put together a dance song using transportation sounds. Lots of fun. I'll try and post a video of it next week. While in the session we got to talking and it came up that i had made a few bluegrass recordings while in Michigan. I've been meaning to post our Middlehill "Pills to Purge Melancholy' record for some time now. I sat down today to do so and realised I don't have a copy. I've got the case but no CD. grrrr. In the meantime I've posted a video of Benjamin Teague and Elliott Earls playing "Dink's Blues" during one of those sessions. It's really pretty. Hope you like it. I'll post the entire record as soon I find it. Too many hard drives...

Spent more time writing Everything Burns tonight. I'm looking forward to letting you all hear it.

01 19 08 12:32 |No comments yet Sondheim's beat me up

Danielle Tobin and I saw Sweeny Todd last night at the Riverview. Some of you may know this, but I have a weakness for musicals (except those by A.L. Weber, but that's another post), and Sweeny Todd was a doozy. I loved it. It's a great re-imagining of the story and the new recordings of these amazing songs are sopt on. Kudos to the music producer and conductor. The costumes were killer as well. I'd dress like a blue collar bloke from that era everyday, if I could only find the duds. As I found with No Country for Old Men, some of the gruesomeness of it was a little over the top. There is 1980's Hong Kong (think Boxer's Omen) style blood squirting everywhere. I found it a little cheezy. Perhaps a political commentary? As the news networks are not showing us the mortality-checking images of some of the atrocities occurring around the world everyday, perhaps directors are serving them up. Well acted, well sung (in that easier to manage speak singing required by the songs), and beautifully imagined.

Looking forward to a full day at home working on "Everything Burns".

01 18 08 1:56 |No comments yet include free music

I attended the Junto at Punk Ave. The topic was the music business and the new distribution models that are challenging our notion of music as a business and presenting music creators with new challenges wrt getting music out there to the people. Mike Kiley of The Mural and the Mint and Kristen Thomson of the Future of Music Coalition were the moderators.

I'm of the mind that music should be free. That's what the marketplace is telling us. People are not placing the same value on .mp3 downloads that they did on vinyl or CDs. People want easy to access, free/inexpensive music. In light of this availability I think consumers are ingesting more music than ever before. Media file players are ubiquitous, it's almost too easy to create your own musical wall paper to accompany you throughout the day. Gone(more like going, probably) are the days of gathering around the turntable and really listening to a recording. So I think we music creators are being challenged like never before to create a sort of beacon than can keep an audience coming back. Look at the big mainstream entertainers of our time, Will Smith, Queen Latifa, Ice Cube, etc.. all have transitioned from being musicians to being entertainers. Adding skills to their quiver that keep them in the limelight and keep consumers coming back for more of their output.

Not to mention the huge hit to actual sound quality people are willing to deal with. No wonder hi - def audio has been on is death bed for years. 5.1 records? I think not. Can't enjoy them on the train, in the car, or at a cubicle. Forget it. Music is easier to make, easier to put out there, lower fidelity, and almost too abundant. It's never been better. More people making more music thats reaching more people than ever before possible. Yes please.

This does however make us change our expectations of monetizing out efforts in music. We need to redefine a successful record. How far can the money from a tour take you? We need to get better at licensing works to TV and film, make better use of touring support services like eventful.com, and we need to always have something new in the stream to keep listeners engaged and returning for more.

Last night, one of the Punk Ave. guys, Rick, mentioned something super important. Curators. How can a listener choose from this infinite pool of new music content. I love recommendation algorithms. I'm curious to see how important better music journalism will become. I'm suspicious of the lack of bad record reviews. It was good to see the booking agent from Johnny Brenda's there last night. She's curating new music, too.

Mike brought up subsidized music. It's coming. This record sponsored by Audi. The record is free but you can only get it from a slickly advertised site.

I could go on and on. My new record is coming along nicely. I've got our living room looking like a pawn shop. Accordion, banjo, uke, guitars, maracas, and piano bits everywhere. I'm taking advantage of Chrissy's 2 months away at Sculpture Space to get it all together. It's still titled "Everything Burns" and yes, it'll be available for nothing, right here.

12 27 07 12:38 |No comments yet RIP Benazir Bhutto, 54

silence silence silence

11 08 07 09:43 |No comments yet I've got invisible armor on

So Michael Nutter will be our new Mayor here in Philly. I'm pleased he won. He was the only candidate we saw out on the town, attending town hall meetings, getting on the stage at the Chinatown festival. It's nice to see a Mayor around town. That's one of the things we really appreciated about Ed Rendell. You could be out to dinner or at a bar and lo and behold there's the Mayor, hanging out with friends or colleagues. It gives a small city like Philly a real small town feel. Hope to see Mayor Nutter (the original Nutta?, I can't help but sometimes say his name in my Jungle MC/Bristol UK accent) around and about.

So things are excellent around here. Chrissy and I are re-building our vestibule. It all started as an innocent attempt to build shelves for our record collection. I was ready to go to home depot and pick up a miter saw (we got the Dewalt that Chrissy uses at work, kick butt machine). Christina was up stairs getting ready and I sort of absentmindedly started pawing (well, more like boot-toeing) at the wall to wall in the vestibule. Just sort of poking around, curious as to what lie beneath. Chrissy comes down and in a thrilling flurry of expletives, scarves, and freshly applied hair products we broke out the crowbars and went at it. 6 hours and a few Evan Williams later we had it down to studs and sub floor. There was an almost geologic amount of lineolium, wood paneling, luan, and wall paper. I'll post pictures later. The floors made this amazing wet sticky "SCHLOOOOOOOP" sound when we peeled up layer upon layer of nastiness. So we've ordered tile, cut the hardi-board, and pointed the bricks. We'll have a new vestibule by thanksgiving. 

Speaking of which, we're very excited to have 16 family members joining us for Turkey day. From the far reaches of NYC, Doylestown, Juniper St., and Old City. Dueling turkeys, grandma's cranberry sauce, hashweh, pies and some of Mike Baker's kitchen magic. It'll rock. 

My concolences to the families of the recent murder victims here in Philly and abroad. I applaud the city of Philadelphia for giving the Boy Scouts an awakening "WHAT, WHAT" about their free rent sudenly becoming not so free on the basis that their anti-gay policy violates the City's anti-discrimination policy. Our many congratulations to Chris Landau on his first few days at his new job. Happy Birthday to Tommy Reynolds. Cheers.

09 17 07 10:51 |No comments yet the salt of the earth

I have some very serious catching up to do. I am blogging this on my new Nokia N800. Chrissy and I got 2 of them to enjoy as communicators and gps systems on our trip to Montreal. We had an amazing few days in Montreal and northern New York. Enjoyed some evil at the border, fresh Maudite at the Black Island, and the run from the Hotel St. Paul along the waterfront.
Since then, Chrissy and I have been mega busy with work, both theirs and ours. Mixing the Good Night Show for PBS. Writing some new stuff with Libby Kanan, who just moved to Philly. University of the Arts has a new star on the block. I’m also very pleased to be working with Best Wishes. A really nice 3 song demo is in the works. More soon. Ben, Brad an I need to get back in the studio soon to finish our new stuff.
The new Carillon PC in my studio is working really well. In other news our pals Chris Landau and Andrea Gaydos are in the home stretch of picking up a house in the neighborhood. Great news there. We spent a great day at the beach with them yesterday. Wildwood, Margate, and Atlantic City. Red Square, Lucy, and sooth-a-cane abound. Check out my flickr page for the rest of the 1000 words on all of the above. Bam.

07 28 07 12:00 |No comments yet OK busto

Amazing long weekend with Ben ‘red slippers’ Teague and Bradley ‘numbers’ Rhodes. Running around, recording new songs, eating cheese steaks (it’s Pat’s btw). Whew. Photos and demo songs to follow.
We also picked up a stray cat. Lenny is his name and biting toes is his game. Awesome animal. Big music fan. His photo is available via the photos link over there.
Now, back to sprouting.

07 18 07 4:14 |No comments yet The Thiefs they call them

So. Wow. Must see things, go to Zonbu.com, and check out the Nokia N800 Internet tablet. The Nokia now supports Google docs and apps so its pretty much a $369 3" x 5" computer replacement. Boooyakasha. Amazing. I've got news for some folks: the application is dead. Any non-workstation class computing can be done entirely from an internet portal. Heck yeah. Photo editing, document creation, storage and editing, skype IP calling, email, etc etc. Open source software! Practically free all around. As soon as someone does some cool marketing on these kinds of devices and services, it's over. The game is gone.

G. Bradley Rhodes and Benjamin Teague are coming into town this weekend to record some new tunes. Looking forward to seeing those guys. Rehearsals with the group formerly known as the North American Martyrs are going great. A new name for the project is in the works. Stayed up late last night moving my Scope DSP system from a clunky rack PC chassis to a classy Carillon Audio PC Chassis. It occurred to me how elegant it is to be able to swap parts out and do little upgrades so cheaply and easily. Points for the PC camp.

07 02 07 10:04 |No comments yet A Chamelion, they call them

Amazing. I've been thinking a lot about how moblie we need to be. Turns out we don't need to be that mobile. But we're being sold on the convincing that we do. Nonetheless I'm enjoying the lightshow on my new Nokia 3220. Solid little phone. Shipped 6 episodes of the Let's Go Show. Did the sound design for a new portion of the Philadelphia Please Touch Museum's web site. Wrote a bit. Received Ben's mandolin and have learned a few chords. Highly recommended : John from Cincinatti. Site59.com. Silverton Yachts. The University of the Arts. Never Compromise Putters. Quicksilver for Mac OS X and the Laab Tuna at Cafe de Laos. New music to upload soon. Happy 4th of July.

Clarity: I got to thinking about the whole mobility issue after migrating over to GMail from Apple's Mail program. GMail now lets you pool email from other pop3 accounts and send from those accounts. It has a great calendar, great contact management, etc etc. The online apps are great. It's like having OpenOffice online. So, I got to thinking that maybe a smartphone is overkill, maybe all I need is a 3G phone that can login to GMail/iGoogle via a browser or their little JAVA app. I've got the GMail app on my little 3220 and it works like a charm. Dead easy to check and send mail from all my accounts. I also go thinking about this amid all the iPhone chatter. GPS, how many of us frequently go to places we have not been before? IM, no thanks. Wireless web, how often are we away from a desktop/laptop with wi-fi? And so on.

My day goes from my Wi-Fi enabled, laptops ahoy house, to the bus for 30 mins, to the studio for 10 hours (Mac Pros and dueling displays everywhere), back on the bus, back home, out to a rehearsal or freelance job. How much more connected do I really need to be. It reminds me of the chapter in "Infinite Jest" in which he talks about the failure of video telephony. At first everyone loved it, than the super-awareness of having to look your best on the phone set in and the technology tanked.

So I'm still waiting for T-Mobile to go 3G. I'll get a small S60 3rd edition Nokia handset. I'll get the GMail happening and ocassionally check my calendar on it. Stereo bluetooth would be nice. And that's that.

06 10 07 3:19 |No comments yet I'd rather be here now

We had the pleasure of seeing an old friend this weekend under some amazing cirumstances. Itamar Meiri is touring the states with Israeli pop legend Rita. They were performing at George Washington University in DC. We drove down, saw Itamar, went out for some rockin' Korean food off of Dupont Circle and attended the performance. It was magical. Over 1000 people in attendance, many of them Israelis. The whole audience was singing along in hebrew. They knew every song and showed Rita and her band a lot of love. That crowd knew how to party. Great band. Excellent light show. Rita has an amazing voice. During the first set some fans walked up to the stage with roses and boquets for her. The fron of the stage was covered with flowers from her fans. At one point Itamar and Rita were both seated at the edge of the stage and did an acoustic song together. Some verses were just Itamar and the audience. Very beautiful. It was great to see a fellow musician and friend working it out and making good things happen fofr himself. Hope to see him soon in Tel Aviv!

Today we visited the Hirschorn and African Art museums. DC is a tough city to drive around in, but very much worth the effort.