Flyin' Home

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.

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.

CD Graphic

No sooner than I say I don't have any artwork for a CD cover than *poof* it magically appears! Thanks to Katzy for this one!



It's not quite the resolution needed for the CD cover insert but it's very close. I've been checking out all the measurements for the different kinds of CD inserts that the duplication place will do and it's really important to understand the 'cut zone' at the edge of the image. You want part of the image to be in that area but don't care if it gets cut off when the CD insert is actually printed.

The best move looks to me to be to just do a simple two-face insert for the CD cover rather than to do four faces and write a book on the inside faces. Does anyone ever read the stuff on the inside of CD inserts? I do once in a while but often there are song lyrics on them in some impossibly-small font. Besides, I don't have two pages of stuff that I would ever want to write about myself.

This is the current line-up for the CD:

01 - House of the Rising Sun.aif
02 - Too Much or Not Enough 2.aif
03 - Drifting 2.aif
04 - Trippin'.aif
05 - Tidal Wave 3.aif
06 - Dragonflight-5.aif
07 - Nekophilia.aif
08 - Podcast for Tinkerbell.aif
09 - Guitar Mayhem.aif
10 - There Will Come a Time.aif
11 - And Darkness Falls 3.aif

If there's anything you think ought to be on there but isn't then please do let me know. I won't promise to add it but I'll definitely look through it. One that suddenly leaps out at me is "Love in the Cemetery" and I'll plan on working that up.

Putting a song into the list is pretty much terminal, tho. Just as you hardly ever hear anything from the "Illusion of Gravity" CD, it's not likely you'll hear anything from the "Dangerous Beauties" CD after I release it. For me, it's not music unless it changes every time you hear it and songs on a CD are like caged birds with the cage door welded shut. "Tidal Wave" has got new life and "And Darkness Falls" is too new to chuck but the others are pretty much toast.

The $64,000 question is whether to give the tunes away. I maintain the best thing I can do is take every one of the CD tunes and upload get them out onto every file-sharing network on the planet as they're going to end up there anyway. So it seems kind of pointless to print a plastic CD as all I really get out of that is to have the tune propagated out onto for-sale digital distribution networks. The one approach would conflict with the other so I'm kind of mixed as to whether either (or any) approach has any value.

Jams With Nurse Judi

The reason I haven't released a CD in so long isn't that there's any problem making one but rather that I couldn't be bothered to do the artwork to the spec they need at the CD duplication place. I definitely will not do it the way I did the last time in which I did all the duplication myself. It's ok with the DVD as I have no plans to market it and it's really not finished anyway, may not be finished for a year.

Don't go scampering off to put some CD art together! I know some of you are probably already thinking that and I love that but I'm not sure that's the way to do it. But maybe it is. I minimize myself a lot but I'm not so blind as to miss that some of you wouldn't mind holding a new Silas CD in your hand and thinking, hell yes, I did the artwork for that. The problem for me is that, say, maybe two or three people come up with ideas and I love you all but I'd have to pick one. Maybe I worry too much!

So where's the jams with judi part?? Patience, patience!

There are loads of CDs as we've got about four or five of them with varying levels of duplication between them so there's lots of potential confusion in making sure you know which CD I mean. For example, there was a Greatest Hits CD and we never released it publicly although some may have copies of it. There was also a "Finding My Way" CD that I never released but a few have copies of that as well. There's also the "Illusion of Gravity" CD and I did release that one but it's under my RL name from which I want to disconnect all musical association. So you're keeping all this straight, right?

So here's what I'll do: I'll try not to refer to CDs in future unless you catch reach out somewhere and get one. The "Illusion of Gravity" CD is still available but very few copies remain and I have no intention of making more as that would just take time away from what I can do now which I know is much better than that CD. If you still want one, you can get it by clicking on the icon in the sidebar. I recommend doing it that way as the audio quality you get from the CD will always, at least until the Internet speed-up, be better than you can download.

I'm getting there...hang with it!

So,

CD #1: "Illusion of Gravity" - currently available until it goes out of print
CD #2: "Dangerous Beauties" - not released pending artwork and duplication
CD #3: "Nurse Judi and the Silas Scarborough Band" - on logistical hold

My thinking on the way to approach this is that Nurse Judi and I should put the CD together BEFORE she debuts in Second Life. We can do some teasers from time to time but for the all-out debut the CD should be available so people can jump on it should they choose. The object at that point is a Second Life tour to work the clubs, just as in RL.

This won't shelve anything I've said about working only for people I like but it's important to understand there is no money in SL so it's much more important to work for good people than 'good money.' One thing Second Life has got is one big bundle of advertising and most of the people in there are chasing small dollars but are missing the bigger game. Cylindrian has seen it and there are some others but mostly people are happy to do gigs for less than they'd make in a real-life bar band. It's huge fun doing that but you'll never break out anywhere from it.

So far it's just one more plan to be an American idol and there are many, many entries in that pile. The trick, and Cylindrian is a very apt example of this, is how to get the jams on CD and marketed without commercializing what you are. However, Cylindrian is actually Grace Buford and she is taking her act on the real-life road. I have NO intention of doing that. In part what I'm doing is an experiment to see if it's possible to create a completely virtual thing and if it can actually go anywhere. One of the things I love the most about music is that, after the last note fades, it completely disappears and it's very much with that idea in mind that I want to do this.

So, yeah, yeah...all very kozmic, Silas, but wtf are you talking about...

Logistics, dear ones! Logistics! Here some teeny tiny little problems:

-- Nurse Judi and I are about eight hundred miles apart

-- To say Nurse Judi is good with computers is like saying George Bush is good at foreign policy, just ain't happenin'. If we try to do it that way, we'll just end up the same way as Bush and something will blow up but no-one will know why.

-- Silas is good with computers but sings like a frog except for once in a while when I almost turn into a tadpole or something like that!

-- Silas writes lyrics by jamming them out from the song. It's almost never the other way around. Some of you have heard that in SL gigs where I'd hum something as I'd know the melody but I just didn't know what the words were yet. (This used to drive Telia nuts - lol)

-- Silas doesn't believe the lyrics should be a solo effort. I don't want to be a star; I just want us to make something good.

-- Silas is very clear that he will produce and direct the CD and that this is known from the outset as committees can't make anything more complicated than an ashtray and then they can't decide what color to paint it. (Hmm, that wasn't a bad line as I look back on it!)

-- This is not a cover band. I'm ok with doing a few but I really don't want to screw around with them that much and ideally not at all. It's crucial to me that the music we make is an expression of whatever we are, planet earth residents, blah, blah. Everyone has a book in 'em but the thing is that most don't write it. This is the opportunity to write the book. (The trouble is that most say my book is a comedy - We shall see!)

-- Silas has the studio gear but it's only portable with great difficulty.

Yeah, yeah, sounds like P.T. Barnum. Nevertheless, it's true.

So I'm open to how anyone thinks this could work. I'm figuring it would probably take about six months to work up the material. What I'd like to do is feature Nurse Judi singing, Vicki on thunder drums, Silas on guitars and bass but I'm still deliberating on the keys. I recognize my limitations on keys but opening to someone else on playing them could result in significant changes to the jams and I'm not really willing to let that go. I'm very clear that bands can either make music or pissing contests so this will take some more thought. The reason this part is important is whether the additional tracks are laid-down before, after, same time as the tunes are developed structurally.

All I see is a whole pile of airline tickets for flights between CVG and PVD so I'm open to any wildly-brilliant ideas anyone might have as I seem to be falling short on those!

Where Is Everybody!

I was pretty much wiped out after the second gig and figured I'd sleep for a few hours. Now it's 2:30 in the morning and everyone's gone to bed. Nurse Judi, I got your messages and I'll call tomorrow. Sorry about the confusion!

The gigs went pretty well today and a tune that had been fading away has come back to life. If someone likes one of my tunes enough to actually remember the name of it and request it in another gig then it'll get some extra attention. The best example of that is when Sister Jacque said she thought I ought to re-visit "Too Much or Not Enough" and I've been playing it ever since. The song isn't at all representative of what I usually do but it was a very perceptive move on her part as that one is now a favorite for a lot of people.

This happened again with "Love in the Cemetery" after Marty requested it and he doesn't show up for gigs all that much but his request is what prompted bringing it back and no doubt in my mind that it rocks harder now than it ever did. Now it's happened again with "Tidal Wave" as I got tired of doing it but Katzy requested it today at the Black Cow gig. It definitely kicked much harder than before so I figured I'd try it in the second gig at the Gaslight and it worked well again. So both of these ones go back to the 'A' list for the new CD, assuming I ever stop talking about it and actually release it.

Cincinnati Itinerary

Tuesday
11:00 - Depart studio
12:00 - Arrive PVD
1:15 - Depart Providence
3:15 - Arrive Cincinnati
4:15 - Arrive at Foulke
Evening - Improv with Anne and whoever else shows up at Foulke. Carry-out from Amal India to take back to Foulke

Wednesday
Morning - Visit computer center
Lunch - Take Anne to her favorite lunch place with grandkids
Afternoon - Improv with Anne
Dinner - Amal India
Evening - Deliberately left open - Sure love to catch up with some Freezebirds but we'll see what Cincinnati wants to do

Thursday
Morning - Improv with Anne
Lunch - Nurse Judi
Afternoon - Improv with Anne
6:00 p.m. - Arrive CVG
7:35 p.m. - Depart Cincinnati
9:35 p.m. - Arrive Providence
10:00 p.m. - Back to Pawtucket

So that should be in time to do a gig at 4:00 SL time on the Thursday, right. Yep! (No, of course I'm not timing the return flight for that. The flight is the last one out of Cincinnati for the day.)

Gigs Today

I'll be playing at noon at the Black Cow and later at three at a Gaslight Music Fest. Times are US Pacific. (hexx, the Black Cow is Katzy's place and she'd love to see explosions! Are you free at noon game time??)

I don't know if I offended Nurse Judi with yesterday's stuff but it definitely wasn't my intention. If apologize if any offense was taken.

Gigs Tonight, Nurse Judi Meets Telia - Updated

Update: Seems not scheduled at 9:00 p.m. I'll probably play at Eden anyway as finding this out this late ain't happening. In fact, that sucks but no big deal, tho. If you don't book the deal yourself, don't go. I thought when we started out that he was covering the booking but it turned out as he went along that he was doing it for someone else. I knew better than to continue at that point but I did. More fool me.

Original: I'm scheduled for Red Palms at 9:00 p.m. US Pacific time. That'll be midnight my time and things could get a wee bit out of control. I only got about three hours sleep last night but there's time to get a bit of snooze time between now and the gig. The plan is to not plan anything. Just go out, crank it and see what kind of noise it feels like making, whether it likes you sliding your fingers down those silky strings or if it's wanting those fast hammer-down moves. Always remember, music is not a sexual metaphor.

Whoa, I was going to say, no, the guitar is not named after some chick. But then I recalled I sure did name it Telia and the only loophole I see is that Telia is not some chick. Let's see, how does this go....

Silas: Nurse Judi, may I present Telia, the most gorgeous guitar I have ever owned.
Nurse Judi: Let me get this straight, Silas. You're asking me to sing in this gig while you play a guitar named after some chick?
Silas: Telia isn't just some chick.
Nurse Judi: You covered that.
Silas: Right, yes.
Nurse Judi: This is very strange, Silas.
Silas: Nope, not really! Telia is the most true-blue, dearest friend anyone could ever want and, nope, there is no plan to ever meet her and I wouldn't recognize her if I did.
Nurse Judi: And you love her?
Silas: Yup
Nurse Judi: See above about strange
Silas: Not really! It's a really pure, beautiful thing that lives entirely in imagination. It detracts nothing from her real life and does nothing at all to compromise it. In fact, I truly believe that it enhances her family life.
Nurse Judi: It's not quite as strange but ...
Silas: Think of watching a movie.
Nurse Judi: OK
Silas: Now get in it
Nurse Judi: Get in what?
Silas: The movie. You are in the movie you are watching.
Nurse Judi: I'm watching Predator and a big alien beast is biting my face off.
Silas: Different movie
Nurse Judi: OK
Silas: You're in the movie and it's reacting to you being there. You are whoever you want to be in this movie. The world looks the way you want it because you built it that way. Your friends are with you and some are hedgehogs, some are people, some are dragons. You can fly and you don't even need wings.
Nurse Judi: It does give an idea of it and I don't mean to flog it but it still seems pretty strange.
Silas: Well, you knew I was strange already.
Nurse Judi: This is true. So you don't want to marry Telia someday?
Silas: I'm already married to her.
Nurse Judi: I thought you said you had never met her.
Silas: I did.
Nurse Judi: But you are married to her.
Silas: Not her, it.
Nurse Judi: It what?
Silas: It, the guitar!
Nurse Judi: You married your guitar?
Silas: Sure, sometimes it talks really sweet to me and sometimes it talks really dirty. We've got a hot thing going.
Nurse Judi: And you want me to sing with this?
Silas: Yep!
Nurse Judi: A Doors song comes to mind.
Silas: Strange Days?
Nurse Judi: That's the one

(Both laugh - Fade to black)

Who Are You?

Telia was concerned earlier about why I would be trying to wipe my RL name off Google as if perhaps this is more than it seems and is actually something self-destructive. Actually it is self-destructive but the key point is which self and I'm very clear as to whether the virtual self and the physical self are the same or different.

Nurse Judi is real but her virtual self is Singer Judi which, as many of you have heard, is more 'real.' I know this is starting to sound like your secret Indian name of power and I don't know if Indians even have such a concept or if that's something some white guy made up for a movie. Regardless of the source, I fully believe the concept that there's a physical self we present to meet the demands of the world and a virtual self that is what you really are. Whether that virtual self manifests itself in pixels through Second Life or through Indian mysticism isn't really an important distinction to me.

There are reasons I do want to be googled under my real life name. It's more than vanity to say that people will google my RL name as there are certain business reasons for doing it. I won't go any deeper with that as it would go to the same place I want to disconnect but that's one of the key reasons for doing it. My RL name and Silas Scarborough have almost nothing to do with each other I'm very close to the point where no-one uses my RL name except when I'm at work. And that's fine; they can call me whatever they want so long as the eagle flies on Friday! lol

So, I ordered a new rubber stamp last night and you'll even see my RL name disappearing from mail I send.

Silas Scarborough Studio
34 Scarborough Road
Censored (It's still the Internet and most of you know the rest of it anyway)

Cute, right? lol

In the Raw - Updated

More nekkie pics? Well, not exactly. This is an example of what a record contract can do to you and you can doubtless provide many others. Quicksilver Messenger Service was one of the San Francisco bands that defined the psychedelic 'movement' and others achieved rock immortality for it (e.g. Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead) but Quicksilver has been largely forgotten.

The following video was shot in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in about 1969. The audio quality is not good but you can't miss that they've got the edge; it's raw as hell and exactly what rock is all about. Herewith, "Mona," one of the great forgotten rock songs of the 60's:




This one was recorded years later and became quite a big hit for them even if it's not remembered much now. My view is that it is a classic example of how a studio can suck the soul out of your music as this sounds like musical Velveeta cheese to me. Here's Quicksilver doing "Fresh Air:"



Update:

The above looks like a simple slam of studios but there wasn't time before work to continue the thought. Comparing a live gig to a studio recording doesn't mean a whole lot but I'd have to go and search some more to find a studio version of "Mona." It wouldn't show a whole lot as the studio version still had that rock edge as well.

Lyric from "Mona:" Makes my heart go bumpity bump
Lyric from "Fresh Air:" Take another hit of fresh air (wadafug is that supposed to mean?)

The objective isn't simply to slam studios but rather to observe a phenomenon that has been seen multiple times. Call it the Jefferson Starship Phenomenon if you like. Marty Balin is technically much better than Grace Slick but he couldn't dream of her ballsy delivery and the band was hugely successful as the Starship but it was still Velveeta.

What's interesting to me is why this happens. I hate it when people ask questions and then answer them without taking a breath and I'm not going to do it because I don't have an answer.