Gigs Went All-Out Today!

The first gig was at hexx's place, Rastafairy Beach, and it was pretty wild as Synonyme was shooting video. I captured as many songs as I could and I'll upload them tomorrow. There wasn't long before that gig and the one at The Tropics Club and hexx did the pyro for that one as well. She's really, really good at it and makes one hell of a spectacle. All kinds of love flying around tonight!

I've now got all the tunes uploaded for the Dangerous Beauties CD and also for the Illusion of Gravity CD. I'm pretty sure I got everything but I'm not positive as I sent the last copy of the CD I had to Sister Jacque. The next one to go up is from about 2002-2003 and it's called "Finding My Way." It's the one with "Hal's Song" on it and some of you know it already. The tune is a good candidate for bringing forward as the message is strong and things I don't like about the structure can be easily fixed. I still don't want to re-hash old stuff too much but there's some that's worth it.

It's kind of cute as I usually dedicate songs that have been reborn through requests from people. "Too Much or Not Enough" became Jacque's song and you can find out why if you listen to the different versions on the CDs I've uploaded already. "Tidal Wave" has become Katzy's song as she's the one who wanted that one brought back. The one that is staged for the CD is the original version and the Katzy version will go up in the next few days. "Nekophilia" really belongs to Sharantyr and "One Fine Day" kind of belongs to Charm. And, wtf, if you can't dedicate songs to chicks, why even play 'em!

Gigs Today

3:00 p.m. - Rastafairy Beach on the sky stage. hexx has all kinds of surprises set up for this one!
5:00 p.m. - The Tropics Club. This is a two-hour gig and Brian and Gina have always been very cool about going with whatever madness occurs to me in the set.

Times are US Pacific / Second Life Time

These will be the first shows in about a week and it'll be really good to play for you again.

Silas Scarborough Discography - Updated

The Songs tab at the top of the screen will take you to where you can play/download songs from the "Dangerous Beauties" CD. Previously it had contained a list of songs I do but many of them were songs I got tired of playing so the page was pretty useless. The update to the page is not complete but it's got downloads for four or five of the tunes from the latest CD and I'll fill it out with the rest of them. I'll keep working it out through all the CDs I've got and that's where the downloads will live.

The same applies with the video tab as that will take you to where you can check out the latest video we've shot. Doing this also simplifies the content of the sidebar as it makes no sense to list the same kind of information in two places.

Update: I've put a bunch of tunes online from the Illusion of Gravity CD and you can check them out under the Songs tab. If you find yourself wanting the CD, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go for it soon as only (I think) about eight or nine of them are left at CD Baby and there's virtually no chance that I'll burn any more of them.

I'll keep on digging back into the archives and get the other CDs out there. Finding My Way was the one before Illusion of Gravity but I never released it. I'm pretty sure I can put it all back together to get it online. There's also a Nurse Judi and Silas Greatest Hits CD that was never released and I'll see to getting that online as well. It'll take a little time to put it all together tho.

Silas Approaching Medium Cool

Since Rhode Island will never create coolness on its own, the only other option is to bring coolness to it and I damn sure don't mean to play covers in bars. Coolness means bringing Nurse Judi in to sing. I can roll over for the New England malaise or I can get off my dead, self-pitying ass and make some jams happen. OK, so onward with Plan "A" to fly Nurse Judi in here.

I won't go into private stuff but I can tell you about some of the stuff we got into. There are various difficulties but there's no question in my mind as to how much both of us want to do it. There was a little bit of talk about good ol' days and I was kind of on the watch for that as I don't care about the good ol' days. We talked some more on that and got a bit more into the vision of it and it's all clear. I didn't hear even the faintest hankering to go back and do Beatles songs as that I flat out will not do. Well, you know that already!

I told her I wanted the music to be what we would have done if we had kept going, that I didn't want to do anything or even the same type of material as we did before. She's excited by it and not in a call me Thursday and we'll do lunch kind of way.

OK, here's the bombshell that I didn't talk about: I'm considering turning the studio into a jam house. It would be easy to carve a couple of apartments out of it but I don't mean to turn it into a rigidly separated environment. What I do mean is to chop and change the house to give at least two private living areas with the shared areas being the studio, living room, dining room, kitchen, etc. Maybe think of it as a hard rock bed and breakfast place.

What I'll do over the week-end is to put out some graphics of the layout of the house and how I think this would work. There's also a basement and it doesn't get musty because it doesn't get wet. The drawback is that it has no windows but it might be alright for moving the audio studio down there while continuing to use the current studio area for video.

What I'll be looking to find out of these graphics is to whether I'm trying to design something that won't work. I'm not an architect and I know there are things inside the walls that I should anticipate before getting all grandiose. What I'm really looking for is thoughts on whether the design would provide sufficient privacy for multiple people living under the same roof and additional sets of eyes could certainly discover things I haven't considered.

More to come... Meanwhile I'll also be setting up the music download page and I hope to make some progress on that tonight.

Update: I just googled 'nurse judi' and then 'sister jacque' - it's working! As a matter of fact, that'd be worth a little thought. Nurse Judi, do you want to use that as a stage name? Keep in mind that your SL persona will be as hot as a massive number of lindens and the good taste of Telia and Sister Jacque can make it. That means a fantastic figure, flowing red hair, Hollywood blue eyes and boobs so firm you can use them to rest your dinner tray when you're sitting around watching TV. Give it some thought as the name you choose for yourself for Second Life is permanent. You have to choose from a long list of last names but your first name can be whatever you want.

A President May Be Made Today

First, congratulations to Sister Jacque as she will be participating in the U.S. vote this time and today may very well be the turning point of the entire electoral process. Although I generally steer clear of politics and I loathe pundits more than snow snakes or chiggers, something Very Important is about to happen.

Yesterday George Bush compared a foreign policy of dialog to the appeasement of the 30's that led to WWII and the Holocaust. He said this in a speech in Israel.

Clinton has already stood up for Obama in defense against this outrage. That's fine but it isn't strong enough. However, Obama has said he will speak directly on the subject and this will be the address in which we find out whether he is a President or just another politician.

I want to see all-out war from a man who can bring respect back to America against the man who has disgraced the country virtually every place on the globe. Face the son of a bitch down and show him what patriotism really means. Show some balls, Obama. Kerry didn't.

If this battle is delivered as a statesman and yet still delivers the smackdown, I'll know he has the stuff to do in foreign policy what he said he intends to do. Today he plays the Big Game and it'll be interesting to see how he does.

Rhode Island

I fuckin' hate it. That's part of the reason I'm not going back to work until Monday. It allows a few days to do a Stepford on myself and pick up the New England vibe. Oh sure, I love it that there's not a goddamn thing to do here. It just tickles my cockles that anything you need has to be shipped in from out of state. My taste buds sing a glorious opera over the belief that surf'n'turf is a New England gourmet treat. It's time for an adventure and Rhode Island ain't it.

Becalmed in Hell

The flight back wasn't an all-out thrill ride but there were some hi jinks along the way. So, I'm back, massively depressed, and I'm going to bed. I did make people smile out there tho and I met some beautiful people I hadn't seen since the last time back to Cincinnati. I gave up Amol India to see them so this was definitely a love connection. Their daughter has grown into a school-trained artist and is now going for her Masters. Anyway, some semblance of balance may emerge but it's not anticipated soon. Sorry.

Flyin' Home - Updated

I'll be flying back tonight at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) so that'll get me back home about 10:00 p.m. I have no idea what shape I'll be in as today began my favorite way with a symphony of barking dogs. Apparently the dog people back home have relatives here.

I saw a couple of my friends last night and we go back a long, long way. They've got the purest, sweetest hearts and it's always a delight hanging out with them. We met up at the bar where I began my long career of wickedness and Maltese Woman (my youngest sister) came to join us as well. All the while we're talking, her six-pound Maltese dog was climbing around her shoulders. I didn't shoot any pics as my camera is pretty much history but I'll try to get some today and maybe it'll surprise me.

The biggest objective today is lunch with Nurse Judi. We talked quite a bit last night about the logistical difficulties in Internet recording and it's still not resolved. Good news I can report is that she's been practicing a lot and is getting a little more confident in her voice. You're definitely going to hear her live. I haven't exactly figured out how it will work but I'm so clear on what I'm trying to do. There's somewhat less clarity regarding how to do it but that's minor so long as you know where you're going.

There won't be any change in what I do and, in fact, the jams are likely to get even more aggressive. I know this is true as Nurse Judi's greatest vocal strength is in exactly the range that would work perfectly with it. The reason I've been going on at such length about various things is that it's so crucial that neither of us will be going into this with any thought of changing the other. There's no doubt in my mind that with her voice and my band will scare Second Life to death. Woot!

Uh oh - Late-breaking news: possible problem with the flight. This shouldn't change anything for lunch with Nurse Judi and I'll update later if it does.

Update: There's a flight at 3:00 something and the one I was planning on taking at 7:35. It looks like a crap shoot on both of them as to whether I'll clear. I'll go straight from lunch with Nurse Judi to the airport as I may have a chance of getting there in time to get into the queue for the 3:00 something flight. The next update will either come from Providence or possibly from here if I don't get out on either flight. We shall see!

Snatch the Pussy

The power of words to confound is pretty much endless. My youngest sister, who doesn't have a cool blog name yet, told me at a bar tonight that maybe we could meet her son, a gay guy. I said something dry about her perverse relationships and immediately got a reaction I should have anticipated about what's the problem with gay guys when actually I had meant her new motherhood as the guy isn't her son and her actual son isn't gay. You're with me so far, right? So I said, knowing the ship was already sunk, "There's nothing wrong with being gay and I'm not saying anything further as it'll just get me into deeper shit."

I don't aim to steal George Carlin's material in talking about pussy. Obviously it's a great word or people wouldn't keep using it. But snatch means the same thing and I find the word hugely offensive while I don't find pussy offensive at all. In fact, I find it even more offensive than the one word you can't say anywhere. If it were my purpose to be shocking, I would use the word but my intrigue isn't with what's definitely shocking but rather with something that is variably shocking.

I have no idea why snatch is offensive to me. I'm not carrying any baggage from imposed morality and I reject categorically the Eden metaphor for that specific reason (i.e. reach for any knowledge not approved by God and you will be banished from Paradise. That idea is so fucked I couldn't even be bothered to elaborate on it.) In any case, where does the offense originate.

By the way, it may seem like gross hypocrisy to live in Eden Park in Second Life but there are two reasons for doing that. Telia and I lived there with a dear friend who owned the place and had named it Eden. To rename it and throw out all that was there would have been very distressing to all three of us but it was ok to tag 'park' onto it when Telia and I took it over as it to some extent delimited the turnover. Eden Park is also the name of a very beautiful place in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it's easily one of the most beautiful parks I've ever seen. So, I'm satisfied with that as it refers to Eden only indirectly rather than claiming to be Eden which would be impossible for me to accept.

Nurse Judi, I've deliberately gone off on this tangent and hopefully it is showing sameness rather than difference. There is nothing I have written that denies the existence of God, however I reject practically everything that has been said in his name but, if you cast aside the dogma imposed by man, you will find we are in exactly the same place.

Back to the power of words to confound... Both of us know someone who claims to be the ultimate Christian but is actually the most evil, black-hearted bitch this side of the Snow White witch over her cauldron. The same words that give others comfort have turned her into a hateful monster, just one more manifestation of the Reverend Phelps sociopathy. (He's the God Hates Fags guy) Since there is nothing in the simple belief in the existence of God that would engender that kind of reaction, the only other conclusion is that it came from the book. It's possible that the hatefulness came from the parents but they, in high probability, got their morality from the same book.

It's not my purpose to rant along about burning Bibles as that's not even faintly my purpose but rather to show why I find the Bible offensive, not in its nature but in its effect. I would no sooner burn Bibles than any other book even though some richly deserve it. One example of that is the write-up on how to make a suicide mechanism with detergents and this has been used to predictable effect multiple times of late in Japan. (By the way, the hype on suicide in Japan is hogwash. The Olympic champions for suicide are in what was once the U.S.S.R. I'm reporting based on what I turned up on suicide stats by country from, I think, 2006 but it may have been 2005.)

Enough of this as anything further is private stuff and won't go into the blog. I'm just trying to make sure we understand completely as that's really got to be there before we can jam. I'm not talking late-night pick-up jams when everyone's got a great buzz going and is playing things for the glorious moment. That's great for what it is but I'm talking about the Big Jam that results in music you plan to keep.

CD Song List

The SONGS tab at the top of the screen will give you a list of songs, most of which I rarely do live anymore. That's where the CD downloads are going to go when I get back.

I noticed there was one tune on there that I haven't done in a while called "Empire of the Stars" and I stopped doing it because the intro sounds too much like a Pink Floyd knock-off (Alazarin only heard a few seconds of it and walked!) and the rest sounds like an exercise unless I'm really, really on when I'm doing it. I'll roll it out this week-end, prob'ly after some changes to it, as I'd like to know for myself and from people listening to it whether this thing is alive or dead for the CD. One thing that definitely has to change is the poofy name.

I'm also thinking of a 'live' CD between now and when Nurse Judi and I can get some jams together. That one will be highly illegal as I have no intention of licensing anything. Those who have heard my version of "Wild Thing" know there's no way I'd ever pay a dime to license it. Other stuff that would go on there would be the funky blues bit and the Barry White 'blues' bit as well. Geez, that'd be about forty-five minutes right there!

Silas Live in Cincinnati - Updated

Not a bad flight out here, all in all. It was really windy in Providence yesterday so I knew it was going to be a thrill ride climbing out but it wasn't that bad. Maybe I'll get into telling stories of Really Scary Airline Flights of the Past someday and long-time readers already know I was flying past New York City on 9/11 just a few minutes (at most five) before it was hit. So, it was good flying yesterday, I didn't forget the GPS, and arrived at my ol' Mother's place even earlier than I thought I would.

It's all huggy stuff after that but there's one bit of irony. I sent my ol' mother a copy of the DVD but her vision isn't too good and she can't find it. For all the DVDs I sent out, the one person who can't see it is my ol' mother. Now that just ain't right and I'll fix it when I get home plus send out more to the rest of the family in Cincinnati.

The itinerary I put out here a couple of days ago is staying the same and, yes, I sure as hell did go to Amol India last night but brought the chow back to my ol' mother's place to hang out with her and two of my sisters, along one with one damn cute little Maltese dog.

I talked to Nurse Judi about lunch yesterday and it was disappointing as lunch schedules couldn't be jiggled around but Wednesday is a lunch at a particular place for my ol' mother and it's the only place she will leave her place to go. It's not some swanky place; it's just the place She Likes To Go and that's all I need to know.

I don't know how the rest of the day will play out and will probably go out roaming around tonight but there's no solid plan, mostly it's just to roll with whatever my ol' mother wants to do.

So, how am I doing with the hard-ass rock dog image so far??

Update: The DVD has been found!

Usually I don't bring anything back from Cincinnati as I have no kids so I don't figure I've even really got any kind of right to be keeping family stuff that would wind up on an evolutionary dead-end. But! Stu Levy, an absolutely phenomenal photographer, shot a couple of B&W images of my ol' father while he was racing and I asked about those.

One of the photographs is a magnificent portrait as it shows his face rigid with total concentration and his foot to the floor on the accelerator. That's more Alex than any other photograph I ever saw of him. (I tried for years to get race photographs like these of the family back in the all-out racing days. Stu went out there a couple of times and shot a whole boatload of 'em! The man is a master photographer but I suspect his interest in medicine has displaced that to some extent.)

Hell Yes I'm Serious!

I just got an email from Katzy and she said she is surprised to see I'm serious about her graphics for the CD. Well, sure I'm serious! You all know how serious I am! Even though it's all one massive game and it doesn't matter at all if not even a single copy sells it's big fun to do, just like the videos. The collaboration is what lifts it from a boring exercise to something entertaining and anything beyond that is chocolate frosting.

Nurse Judi, I'll be in the air before too much longer and I'll call when I'm in-town although it's going to be tough with your hours. It'd prob'ly be good to think a bit about the stuff that I'll be developing. It wraps around Second Life being a world of pixels but, to my perception, everything is just pixels. Everything we see is a manifestation of what we want it to be rather than what it really is. This is rather less than revolutionary philosophy but I want to stay within that idea nevertheless.

What that means is no slightest respect for any authority whatsoever except for that which exists in a spiritual realm. Don't rush forward and take that to mean a religious epiphany as it's not. I'll respect the spiritual beliefs of anyone but I don't respect at all the physical manifestation of that belief. For example, I respect someone's belief in God but I don't respect a word in the Bible.

Of all of the religions Judaism makes the most sense to me but I haven't exactly done a PhD thesis it. The Old Testament had some utter rubbish in it but overall it's logically sound whereas the New Testament is pretty much fantasy from start to finish. From my perspective, unless spiritual revelations bring truth to everyone, either one or the other is false or both are but they cannot possibly both be true. Therefore truth is somewhere deeper where people haven't gone yet.

Our beliefs are different and the same and it's important to understand the differences are minor relative to where they're the same. If you're bound by dogma and really don't think King David was gay then the differences will probably be too much to overcome but if you truly believe there's a World Beyond This, whatever you want to call it doesn't matter, then there's really no problem at all.

This isn't an agnostic back-door into Heaven but rather a life study. When I talk about Hendrix being motivated by forces beyond anything we understand, it's the same thing. Reading Hawking and having an interest in particle physics is the same as well; it's just trying to get a better view of the pixels. What I have learned from all of that is you can't learn much of anything from the pixels except that the answer is not there. Read "A Brief History of Time" and check out Hawking's dance with religion and you'll see what I mean.

So, how did Hendrix get the vision to do what he did? Who the fuck knows but one thing I know for sure is that it wasn't dope or anyone could have done it. The time had nothing to do with it or, just the same, everyone would have done it. The kozmic alignment of planets sounds pretty groovy but they're really just big rocks so that doesn't tell me a whole hell of a lot about spiritualism. I've used Hendrix as an example several times but the objective of this exercise isn't to find the magic key to play a guitar like he did a that does a service to no-one. The objective is to tell the tale I've just told but to do it one whole hell of a lot better than I just did.

OK, that is damn sure enough of being serious. I'm going to go flying and I'll hope to see you all very soon. I'll check in here as I can but it's not likely I'll show up anywhere else. Have a great time and see you again on Thursday night.

(Sister Jacque, sorry about the computer troubles last night as it would have been pretty swell to do some tunes for you. The "Tidal Wave" one has definitely got new legs. Playing the lead with echoes gives balls to it that it never had before and I just wish to hell I had recorded it last night as that was damn sure the tightest I ever played it. Next time!)

Dangerous Beauties

Here's a bit of titling on the CD cover image. I'm thinking what would be good for the back of the cover and for the tray insert would be the same image but without me or the other images in it, just the landscape. That'll permit listing all the song titles, etc.



Ah well, I better get serious about flying as I suspect they'll leave without me if I don't get there on time. I'll try to blurb some more later and as possible when I'm roaming around but otherwise will be back Thursday night.

Selling CDs

There's been much talk of the selling of CDs over the last few days in this blog and at SLMC and I appreciate hexx's comments from yesterday about giving the tunes away. There is New Music Strategies which is an excellent resource for consideration of the ways one can make music available in the digital realm.

The question isn't whether to give stuff away. Duck Soup has been on the Web for well over ten years and there were a few half-hearted efforts to sell stuff but the vast majority of stuff has been free and that's everything from music to perl scripts. I'm not getting defensive on you, just providing some background.

There will definitely be a section of this site that will include downloads for the songs on the "Dangerous Beauties" CD and I'll probably backfill that as much as I can from previous CDs. It's likely I can get all of that material online as I've got a CD Projects folder that has the AIFF (high-quality) versions of all or most of the CD material I've recorded.

However, to fail to recognize that people want to buy music is to cut off a possible larger audience and a possible revenue source. Ignoring those people not only rejects those people out of hand but, in my view, gives up the game to defeatism. It's not that I believe I'll sell a big pile of CDs but that it's defeatist not to try. Even if Second Life music is just another huge pixel game, it really doesn't matter as to me one should play it to the maximum regardless of that.

The conclusion of a great deal of discussion is that one should push out one's music in every possible direction, to include CD sales, free downloads, commercial downloads, and every other possible way that will get it in front of people. I really don't see this as compromising any of the hippie views of the 60's as all I see this doing is opening myself to the idea that someone might really want to buy the CD. Maybe it's some young suitor who needs to be able to pass the CD to the object of his mad love rather than downloading the tunes and saying, "Hey, baby, welcome to my bitmap."

So, my next move is to set up a page here that's specific for my CDs and to make downloads of all the tunes available. If I stick to the spirit of what I've been writing, I should probably hold off on putting that online until I've made the CD available. That's not a big deal as I'm looking to wrap this up in a couple of weeks. After that, it's a couple of hundred dollars and a couple of weeks to get a stack of them printed and it's off to the races.

Getting the CD artwork from Katzy really made a huge difference as it broke the logjam. I like tuning up my photographs and various other things one can do with Photoshop but I'm not a graphic designer. The thing that really gets me about the image is that I never in a thousand years of trying would have come up with it by myself.



So, it needs titling and all that stuff but I'll get cracking on that, maybe today or maybe after I get back.

Gigs Tonight

There's a Relay For Life benefit gig at 4:00 p.m. SL time and I'm not sure how the evening will play out as I haven't done much of anything to get ready for flying out of here tomorrow. I did make a reservation for a car, tho. Apart from that...zip.

I'm not going to tone anything down just because it's RFL as Tinkerbell would damn sure call me a puss for doing that. And she is damn sure no puss so count on it being cranked!

There will be some trivia questions I'll throw out in the gig. The way I figure I'll do it is I'll give Harold the answers and the lindens up front. I'll throw out a question and tell people the first one with the right answer in open chat as certified by Harold is the winner. $1000L for each question. I'll try to think up some more questions but there's one tiny problem: I suck at trivia.

Oh, one more twist: if no-one gets the first one, the pot rolls over to the second one. Yeah...that's it. That's how to do it!

Also, I got the Silas Scarborough Studio stamper for my postal mail today. It's all part of wiping out my RL name and I'm getting a big kick out of that. My RL name is steadily dropping in Google and Silas is steadily rising. What do we learn from this, kids? That we can play Google like a harmonica? Well, yes. But there's one tiny problem: I suck at harmonica.