grand canyon

inspiration

data is not knowledge

no rest for the weary.

let's rewind back to june. i was complaining that i didn't have enough work, and now i can't stop working. i've essentially been on tour since july, with very few breaks in between. i guess we're all hypocrites, right?

i don't have much to talk about at the moment. we go through phases, don't we? we constantly absorb all kinds of data, which then gets transferred into information, and then that becomes knowledge. if you're lucky, it turns into wisdom. i had a fascinating conversation about this with juilliard composition professor philip lasser. he believes that the iphone, or the internet in general, has ruined that critical process. the terrifying ubiquitousness of a website like wikipedia allows us to import all kinds of data into our digitally wired brains, and most of time it slips into some synaptic cleft without advancing to the "information" stage. as an ambassador of the A.D.D. generation, i agree with this sentiment in some ways. when i want to "learn" about something, i type the search words into google. i peruse the first 3 websites, and then i feel sort of satisfied. the problem is that i can't back it up with any empirical wisdom - it just gets lost in the constant influx of data. my memory is intrinsically selective, and although i'd love to retain information about the minutiae of russian futurism or even the different genera of tree finches, i simply can't do it.

hmmph. unless i read a book on the subject. that's where the argument takes an interesting turn. is it the medium or how we digest it? perhaps other people take away true knowledge from wikipedia summaries, but i find myself getting distracted too easily. i aimlessly click on links within links. for example, i may start with a search on the personal life of james joyce and end up guffawing at the synopsis of pee-wee herman's troubled career!

this is why i've been leaning more towards books this year. they stick to the ribs. here's last month's reading list for all you nerds out there:

magritte by bernard noel
the way of liberation by alan watts
straight man by richard russo

right now i'm reading 20th century harmony by vincent persichetti. oh boy!

and here's my list of listening:

tyondai braxton - central market
bela bartok - string quartet no. 4 in c major
micachu and the shapes - jewellery
skeletons - money
kurt weisman - spiritual sci-fi

that's all for now. if anything crazy happens on this tour, i'll write about it.

zappanale = utopia

a painful 10AM wake-up.

much like the "red alert" signal on a punctured submarine, my iPhone alarm is loud enough to wake up the entire crew of the U-96 (even after its demise). i wipe the crust from my unabrow and head to the lobby. grab a cup of strong coffee from my cafe dance partner. she seems wistful, but i'm sure doing the robot will get her out of it.

10 of us scurry into an 8 passenger van. one of us has not showered for days, which makes the drive comparable to being put into a 4 hour headlock by a homeless prizefighter. no worries though, we're on the way to one of my favorite places in the whole world. a quaint village called bad doberan. it's 15 kilometers west of rostock, and it's the home of zappanale, a week long festival dedicated to the genius of frank zappa: composer, filmmaker, guitarist, politician, iconoclast.


i wish i could describe the festival in full detail, but it's difficult for me. it's as close as i've come to some form of heaven. an endless supply of vegan food, a bizarre collection of avant-garde LP's. loud dissonance and difficult rhythms. art. weird girls. hangmatten. clean air. a lifetime of memories.

this year marked my 5th visit to the mecca of zappa. it gets better every year. there were two stages this time around! i still say it's the most organized festival in the world. you can quote me on that. i rubbed elbows with some of the all time greats, such as david aellen (of gong fame) and kawabata makoto (of the mind-melting acid mothers temple). eating a continental breakfast with roy estrada was hilarious. i will never forget it!

i also became best friends with the fine people of discorporate records. discorporate is one of the leading avant-garde labels in europe. coincidentally, they signed my close friends capillary action, a group led by oberlin grad jon pfeffer. jon and i played in a band together when we were 10 years old. it was called...well, the name was crude, perhaps even downright offensive. nevermind.


zappanale ended with a smashing late night performance on the second stage. johannes (drummer of schnaak and co-founder of discorporate) led the most inspired zappa/doors tribute group i've ever seen. their regular set closed with a rowdy cover of "L.A. Woman". for the encore, they played "girls just wanna have fun" - in the nude.

and that concludes my recap of the project/object european tour.

ich bin ein berliner (part two)

i shared a room with robbie and svalgard.

we collectively drank a pitcher of potent german beer during our "phuk et meal". careening down die fabrik hallways at 3AM, we were shouting, obnoxious amerikaners. when ike came into our room to use robbie's laptop, he barfed out the definitive phrase of the eerie hostel experience: "zo, gentleman. we are killing ze girl tonight?". laughter ensues, a loud knock on the wall. angry neighbors! sleep.

early rise. die fabrik cafe is right next door and we all agree on it for our frühstück (breakfast, for my american readers). a huge plate of dunkelbrot and käse. the danceable morning music ranged from the bangles to madonna to weirdo kraut jams. i coaxed the very german baristas into doing the robot with me. also, robbie and I put our iphones next to each other to simultaneously film wide screen freakouts of eric svalgard's face. one day we'll project it on a giant screen, i'm sure.

went to the schallplatten shop across the street. picked up records by gyorgy ligeti and gil evans. i delved into the obscure bin and found a german mad magazine LP, which brought back memories of my alfred e. neuman obsession. goodbye, 40 euros.
after the seratonin release of record shopping I walked around the corner, only to find remnants of the berlin wall!



a moving experience. i was only 2 years old when the wall was destroyed, too young to realize the significance of the event. the residual effects of its destruction are obvious. walls of the once pale industrial buildings are now splattered with paint and large line drawings. this kind of freedom is infectious, and evidently it's still new to the people that live here. 20 years is not a long time, not long enough to undo the kind of oppression they endured for more than a quarter century.

strolled back to die fabrik and hung out until it was time to set up our gear at the dot club. thanks again to the fabulous merlin ettore of trap. not only did he blow my mind, but he also lent me his drumset!

great 3 hour show that night. the crowd seemed to enjoy it. the evening's most entertaining moment: a group of young floozies came in during one of our more cerebral jams. can you imagine a group of paris hilton type socialities attempting to do their ancient ritual slut dances to an odd-time keyboard solo? a hilarious sight for any musician. the legendary joe jackson was in attendance as well. i bit my tongue when i shook his hand, because i almost started singing "is she really going out with him?".

afterwards i met my new best friend flora. we discussed the state of american pop culture. it's a shame, i feel like i have to defend myself sometimes, you know, because i'm an official ambassador. our long discussion about bret michael's "rock of love" brought us to the the crux of the matter. mainstream television is devolving at a rapid rate. you have to furrow your brow when an educational network like national geographic is now all reality programming. maybe I should blow up my TV. why do i even pay a comcast bill? oh right. thank god for adult swim. let's all push the envelope together.

ich bin ein berliner (part one)

our next sequence went like this:
bilbao to madrid, madrid to berlin.

the latter flight was delayed due to technical issues (the plane sounded like a loud dentist drill). we waited 45 minutes and then we scrambled onto a shuttle bus. the driver seemed to be lost, because he gave us a head-spinning tour of the airport and all of its underground tunnels and pathways. fascinating, but not my idea of a good time during a day of dehydrating travel. speaking of dehydration, i'm a bit pissed at iberia airlines. where do they get off charging their customers for things like water and snacks? even southwest airlines - which is practically a chaotic free-for-all - has free drinks and snacks onboard. the going rate for an unappetizing cheese sandwich on an iberia flug is a bank-breaking €7.50, or $10.50 in hard earned american doll hairs! oh well, i'll stop complaining. i was in europe after all.

robbie and i were silly on the trip to berlin. in a deliriant frenzy, i managed to create a realistic cat out of a barf bag. robbie added accoutrements and filagree to this paper cat, and suddenly we were convinced that it was real. we made it nuzzle and purr while confused spaniards looked on and shuddered at our childish behavior. we even made a music video of the paper cat. the guy next to me remained stoic and straight-faced during our shoot, which makes it that much funnier.

here's a picture of the fantastic paper cat after we touched down in berlin.


iberia also lost our luggage when we did the shuttle bus switchover. this meant no clothes or toiletries for most of the group (except for me, thanks cheri). we filled out a bunch of papers, met our fabulous show promoters. i was losing patience though, and at this point, i was starving. so, we cabbed it to a thai restaurant which totally summed up our day with it's name. ladies and gentleman, phuket:


for our "phuk et meal", we were joined by none other than the great bob rutman. rutman was a huge part of the downtown nyc avant-garde scene in the 1970's. he was respected by stockhausen and cage, and he collaborated with robert wilson (of philip glass fame) and the recently deceased merce cunningham.

here's a video of his meeting with john cage:


but wait, it gets better! our sleeping quarters for the evening was "die fabrik", a beautiful punk rock hotel in the hip area of kreuzberg. from what i've read, it's a converted factory building from the early 1900's. i loved it immediately...except when we got there they only had 3 rooms for 7 people. ugh. fich mich!

roll over, eindhoven/la-re-do, a deer, a female deer

the joy of being alone.

sometimes i undervalue the perks of having time to think, time to breathe. according to CNN, most americans have replaced "free time" with "weisure", or rather "work + leisure". a portmanteau word. another abbreviation for our fast paced lives. perhaps it is more fitting to create a blend from this simple equation: work + leisure = seizure, or as i'd like to call it, weizure. i recently purchased an iphone - the shining beacon, the sexy face of weizure. it's an overwhelming device, and when i'm in my multi-tasking/rapid text message/websurfing/twitter mode, i can feel my tongue rolling back into my esophagus.

work and leisure should be separate entities, you know, like church and state (here's looking at you, bush administration). my at&t contract is less than 90 days old, so when i went to buy an international plan for my european tour, i was denied. i knew what this meant - in order to communicate with my bandmates, i'd have to remember their hotel room numbers and whereabouts. no phone calls, no text messages. this also meant that i'd have no access to a 3G network. no social networking, tweets, friend requests, or anything of the like.

and suddenly, less anxiety. more fresh air. time to breathe!

which brings me to my last two touring locations: eindhoven, nl and laredo, spain.

holy shit. maybe last year i was jaded or ignorant, because i don't remember this kind of beauty. on sunday we played to a packed house in eindhoven at one of my favorite clubs, effenaar. effenaar has the BEST backstage food. a delightful vegan buffet comprised of a salad bar, curried vegetables, and cayenne eggplant. oh yes, i could live here.


the sidewalks have separate bike lanes with traffic lights, so i'd be less prone to a serious bike accident like this one:


i could also live in spain. goddamn. here's the view from my room:


it took us a full day of travel to get to laredo. our connecting flight in madrid had technical issues so we had to take a shuttle bus to another plane. naturally we didn't get to eat very much, so when we arrived in laredo, robbie and i went searching for a restaurant (at 11PM). after getting totally lost, we found a group of 3 restaurants: telepizza, the texas embassy, and dablos. which one sounds the most appetizing? i knew you were going to say telepizza. however, we used our collective brainpower and ultimately decided on dablos, and it was one of the best meals i've had in a long time.

also, they had duff beer in stock!


the next morning svalgard, robbie, and i went to the beach. swimming in clear ocean water. this is the life.


last night we performed at an indoor soccer arena with filthy habits ensemble and the grand kazoo. a complete evening of zappa music. such great people.

and now, on to berlin. you better "take my breath away", berlin! (get it? like the band berlin? from top gun?)