New Recording – A Plague of Frogs

I had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend.  Michelle came home for a visit, and we all went out to Long Island Thanksgiving day, and the rest of the time played some games and watched some movies and slept in every day day caught up on a bunch of random tasks. Among them…

I finally finished the song that could not be finished is finished.  A Plague of Frogs is probably to most complicated song I’ve attempted to record, arrange and produce, in the terms of number of interlocking themes, changes in sound and tone, overall length, and sheer number of tracks and layers.  In the end I made it a battle between sax vs. synth rather than sax vs. guitar, and I really leaned in to the bloopy, buzzy sound of the synthesizer to create an alien vibe.  After I did the synth solo I had to put it aside for a while.  I was in a phase of listening to heavily layered 80’s records like So, Synchronicity and Power Windows and had a bunch more ideas to further develop the arrangement.  But then I got to a place where the build up in the middle section was satisfying, and after that there was nowhere else to go.  I found myself sculpting the sound by taking things away rather than continuing to add more parts, and once that realization hit it was pretty quick to finish up the song and get to a good mixdown.  The rest of the kitchen sink will have to wait for other songs.  

So here it is. 

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/plutoniumDirigible/PlagueOfFrogs54k.mp3

I hope you enjoy!

The Global Jukebox 3.0 is Live!

With all the craziness going on around these days, I’m very happy to announce The Global Jukebox 3.0 is live. You can see it at:

https://theglobaljukebox.org

It’s a big release with alot of new stuff. One is that the whole map interface has changed. This we necessitated by mapbox, whose map software we use, sunsetting their old api and introducing an all-new, completely different one. Our map is very complex with lot of data, lots of layers, and different kinds of visualizations, animations and styles on top of it, so this involved a pretty deep restructuring of the code. The original goal was feature parity, but as we got into it, we realized the new api offered affordances with should take advantage of. First was the the map tile load much quicker, and panning and zooming around the map are much smoother, so a bunch of tricks we had to compensate for the shortcomings of the old map could just be thrown out. Another is the new map api supports 3-D projection, with one possible mode being a globe instead of a flat map. We redesigned the visual experience to take advantage of that. The fully zoomed back view allows you to model an atmosphere and background starfield, and even make the Earth turn, so that was fun. Zoomed in, it resembles the previous flat map, but with a great, seamless zoom-in transition. At the end we redesigned the app’s landing page to show off the globe and freshen up the design style.

The other big new feature the introduction of routes, that allow for a unique url for every app state. This in turn allows for sharing links, moving and forward back thru the app, generating a spiderable sitemap so all our songs, cultures, journeys, etc., will show up when google for those things. It turns out the app states are numerous, and sometimes deep and complicated, with lots of edge cases and corner cases. Previously this had been a single page app, so this work required us the think thru all the various states and how they can stack and compound and transition from one to the another. Additionally, the whole app is basically built out of bespoke javascript, so we couldn’t just drop in a framework and retrofit around it. We built our own, of course following best practices for good design patterns.

Martin and I have working the last six month or so on this, with Martin mainly doing the routes and me mainly doing the map. It was a big lift, and I must say he is a great partner to work with. Compared to a lot of software engineers I’ve worked with, I care alot about code quality, not just for it’s own sake, but for extensibility, readability, correct logic, names and abstractions, and very low bug rate. And Martin was right there with me, reasoning things thru, puzzling out thorny problems as the arose, and being patient and meticulous with quality control and attention to detail. I guess it helps that we learned to program computers together as kids, and have similar attitudes and sensibilities as to what make good software and what make a software project worth doing.

And of course I must acknowledge our project director Anna Lomax Wood, without whom none of this would be possible. Her deep knowledge of world folk music and cultural anthropology, her intelligence and positive attitude are all big guiding lights. It’s an honor and a privilege to work her. Kudos too to Kiki who, although has been pretty light-touch on this project recently, has contributed in numerous way including project management, organization, visual and UX design, devops, creating and formatting content, metadata, audio assets, and generally running things over at the Association of Cultural Equity.

Next up, The Global Jukebox 3.1. Stay tuned!

Super Blue

Lest all y’all think life these days is all going to see bands and fun trips to beaches and mountains, I’ve actually been busy with the software thing this whole time too.  A couple of big project milestones in my day job.  Firstly one of my projects, the Data Rights Protocol, has reached version 0.9 and we’re entering the initial deployment phase, which involves passing live data end-to-end among consortium members to implement actionable consumer data rights requests. Meanwhile, we also put up a new web site where you can learn all about it at:

https://datarightsprotocol.org

Second, another project of mine, Permission Slip, is going live with version 2.0 of our this week, including an all-new android version of the app. And there’s a new web site for this one too:

https://permissionslipcr.com

Finally, we’re getting very close to releasing version 3.0 of the Global Jukebox.  This is a major rev I’ve been working on for months with Martin.  One big new features is an all-new map visualization that starts with a spinning globe, and is much more powerful, flexible and performant than the old one.  The other big thing is the app now has routes to express the app state as a unique url.  Each of these was a big lift, and we’re now in the final phases of QA and tweaking the styles and messaging on the landing page.  So watch this space for an announcement sometime soon.  But for now you can get a sneak peak on our staging site at:

https://stage.theglobaljukebox.org

In the world outside of work, it’s been one of the rainiest Septembers I’ve ever experienced. Three out of the last four weeks it’s rained some or most or even all of the weekend, were’ talking epic, heavy, ark-building rains here, to the point where I’ve only gotten out on my bike one Sunday the whole month for a big ride, and not at all for a weekday evening in the last two weeks.  The days are getting shorter faster, so soon the opportunity for a ride after work will be gone.  

As luck would have it, we did go out to see another concert last weekend.  It was Superblue, a funk-fueled collaboration between Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter, at Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village.  Poisson Rouge turned out to be a pretty nice club, although the waiters were kinda disorganized and incredibly slow.  The band itself was great.  The opening act was the horn section from the main group, backed by a different rhythm section.  They were really fun, funky and entertaining.  At one point the trumpet player switched to tuba and the trombone player to beatboxing, leaving just the sax player.  They did a Stevie Wonder medley which was just mind blowing.

The main act was most excellent too.  Charlie Hunter plays a guitar with extra strings and an octave effect so it functions as both the bass and the guitar for the group.  Needless to say his technique is innovative and incredible, but he spent most of his time in the pocket, just groovin’ and grinnin’.  Kurt himself was great, picking diverse source material such as “Naughty Number Nine” from Schoolhouse Rock, delivering them with powerful, soulful phrasing, and interjecting philosophical soliloquies a la Elwood Blues. 

Just yesterday we were supposed to see yet another shoe, Tuck and Patti at the Irridium, but it got cancelled due to the weather.  There were such heavy rains and flooding in New York City that the seals in the Central Park Zoo escaped their enclosure and were were freely swimming/sliding around the whole zoo.  I guess they went back on their own without having to be rounded up.

Three for the Show

Sometimes things come in waves, and it seems everyone is on tour at once right now.  I’ve been the three concerts in the last week, with more coming up, and even more I’d like to see but don’t have the time for.

First off was Sting, a week ago at Jones Beach Theater in Long Island.  Jones Beach is a great place to see a show, a semicircular amphitheater right on the edge of the bay.  We had seats in the lower deck, just a few rows up from the floor, so a great view.  We went with Jeannie’s sister Mary, and before we went in, we had a little tailgate party with sandwiches and a bottle of wine.  It said there was no opening act, and when we got inside there was a guy who looked and sounded alot like Sting singing and strumming and acoustic guitar, accompanied only by a drummer.  I thought, wow, Sting looks great for a guy in his seventies, and he’s been working out, his neck is alot thicker.  But it turns out it was his son.  Sting Jr. had some great songs and a great voice, and looks alot like his dad. 

After that the real Sting came on with his band.  He actually does looks great for a guy in his seventies, and sang and played with lots of energy.  He played a fender P-bass with very little treble in the tone.  The band of course was great.  There were enough musicians to cover all the different sounds from his solo hits and a good smattering of Police songs.  The featured jamming instrument was a harmonica, and the dude was great.   Also some backup singers, keys, guitar; everyone in the band had a feature section, which was fun.  I saw Sting once in the 1990’s and the vibe of that show was musically excellent but down, with predominately dark, slow, introspective songs.  This time he still did his share of moody ballads about losing his faith in a used up world, but kept it balanced with upbeat and uptempo numbers.  As a special bonus Branford Marsalis on the saxophone came out and sat in with the group, and lifted things to a whole nuzzer level.  He was one of my saxophone heroes back in the day, and the way his playing complements Sting’s songs is just perfect.  We also discovered the right parking lot get out of there quickly without getting stuck in traffic.

Then over the weekend we went to the Outlaw Music Festival, again with Mary.  This was in the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, a really cool venue that I had no idea existed.  When I heard about the show I thought it was going to be in the tennis stadium at the north end of Flushing Meadow Park, but it was actually at the old stadium at the south end, part of the original tennis club.  It hasn’t been used the for the U.S. Open since the 1970’s but they still put on concerts there.  

Mary and Lou used to live in Forest Hills, and Jeannie and I not to far away in Woodside, Queens, so we before the show we got together for brunch with some old Queens friends, John and Mary and Larry.  That was lots of fun.  The show was a festival so by the time we got in it was already underway.  There were five bands. The main one I wanted to see was Bob Weir.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen the Grateful Dead I’d almost forgotten they existed, although at one time they were my second-most-seen band after Rush.  Bobby of course did mainly Dead songs, maybe not as stretched out as they used to back in the day and with a little more focus on the songs, but still with a few extended jams.  The band included a combination horn and string section.  One thing I liked was when he segued into What’s Going On? in the middle of Eyes of the World.

The headliner of the night was Willie Nelson.  For whatever reason Mary, who grew up in Brooklyn, is a big Willie Nelson fan (as is my cousin Peter from Ontario).  To me Willie is one of those guys who was always on the radio when I was a kid, and since then transcended his own long career to achieve living legend status, so I though it was pretty cool.  The surprise special guest in his band was Norah Jones on piano and vocals, a legend in her own right, who I guess wanted to tour with one of her idols.  There was also an excellent harmonica player.  Now in his 90’s, Willie can still play and sing.  Alot of his style is rooted in the great American songbook, and he threw in a good handful of standards as well as his own hits.  His set was pretty short because in contrast to the deadheads, Willie’s songs were all basically three minutes and out.  He might’ve skipped an encore cuz it was starting to rain.  

Then finally last night we saw Peter Gabriel at Madison Square Garden.  He and Sting are kind of next door neighbors in terms of their career arcs, with huge solo popularity and critical acclaim in the 80’s after leaving successful band to explore new sonic ideas, and then a long trajectory of more personal, artistic songwriting. Unlike Sting, Peter Gabriel now looks like an old man, bald and overweight compared to the smirking face on MTV back in the day.  He did two sets, the first being mainly new material, with a predominately dark, slow, introspective feel.  The second set was mainly his hits from throughout his career.  The band was great, and featured the inimitable Tony Levin on bass, as well as a combination horn and string section and backing vocalists, and other members joining in from time to time on flutes and pipes.  It occurred to me that he’s been perfecting the same ideas since Genesis in a sense, and the band was perfectly suited to replicate those mellotron sounds using natural instruments.  The show was great, and visual presentation too, with lighting and projected artwork and animation as well as the music.  And like Sting, Peter Gabriel has alot of great songs and really made the most of them.  I was a bit disappointed but not too surprised he didn’t play anything by Genesis.  I mean maybe not Supper’s Ready but at least a bit of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway would be nice.

Truth and Soul

We saw Fishbone open for Parliament Funkadelic at the Capital Theater in Port Chester just the other day.  I’ve been a big Fishbone fan since the 1980’s and seen them a few times before, most notably at the Lollapalooza Festival of 1993, when I was working at MTV’s Electronic Carnival.  Their sound is a bit hard to describe, but I guess they came up as part of that L.A. ska punk scene, combined with deep funk and melodic vocals with great harmony.  And of course great songwriting that shows of all their strengths.  It looks like they still have their original bassist, singers and horn players, but the guitarist, keyboardist and drummer were younger looking guys.  They put on a fantastic show.  The lead singer also played a variety or saxophones, including an impressive black and gold baritone. He seemed to suffer some kind of wardrobe malfunction while crowd surfing; I’m not sure if it was part of the act or not.

Parliament Funkadelic were great too.  George Clinton is still out there doing his thing in his eighties, although he mostly sat in his chair, sang now and then, and conducted the band from time to time.  I could mention that I met George Clinton once in the ’90s when I was working at MTV doing music video games, and he wanted license his whole catalog to us to sample and use in a game. I thought that was a great idea, and worked on a bunch treatments and prototypes for a game in which you go around doing funk jams, and set up different beacons on different levels to ultimately call the mothership, and at the end a bug UFO comes down and the P Funk band jams with you. It would’ve been amazing! But alas, that game never got made.

There were probably twenty musicians on stage including horns, multiple singers, two bass players, several guitarists and just one guy on keys.  The whole thing was one continuous stream of songs, jams, segues and solos.  At one point, when they just finished playing Give Up the Funk, it looked as if they might end the set, but instead they moved into a slow, sparse bass pattern.  The one by one half the guys in the band took an extended solo: trombone, synthesizer, bass, alto sax, guitar, it went on for like a half an hour on the same minimalist groove, and it was amazing.  The alto player in particular had that searing wailing altissimo sound, and cut above everyone else.  The band brought it up after that and did two more songs, another half hour at least.  

Last week was the one and only five-day work week in August for me.  Over the weekend I took the Mustang out, caught up on the yardwork again, this time mainly the north side of the house, plus the neighbor’s willow tree and weeding under the hedges.  We got back into going on bike rides on Sunday morning.  I did fifteen miles this time.  Went out to Long Island for a visit before Michelle goes back to school.  That’s it.

Summer Time

And the livin’ is easy.  Moving right on from the OUSA convention to the next adventure, with barely time to put down our bags.  We just got back from a trip up to Buffalo to visit family and friends.  Drank some beer, grilled some steaks and dogs and burgers, took some walks in the park, watched some fireworks.  Very languid, very relaxing.  I feel like it’s been one continuous spell of focus and getting things done since the new year, so it was a welcome stretching out of time.

On the trip up we stopped by Watkins Glen and hiked the trail up the canyon overlooking the river and rapids and waterfalls.  Very scenic, very impressive.  The next day we got together for a fancy dinner at a restaurant downtown with Lizzy, and with Larry and Jackie and three of their kids and Timothy’s girlfriend.  A great time, lots of catching up and storytelling.  After dinner we went to the bar around the corner where Lizzy plays trivia, and continued, and after that even lingered in the parking lot as everyone tried to get in one last story about camping and bears.  On the third Martin and his family came down and stayed for the fourth.  Beers, birthday cake, hanging out, rollerblading, fireworks.  Did I mention it was languid and relaxing?

On the way up there my car started having problems with the air conditioner.  This seemed to fix itself, but then there was a leak in the power steering.  On top of this, the car seems to have mysteriously acquired some scratches sometime in the last few weeks.  Ah well, I guess it’s getting to be kind of old.

Saturday we went to the Pleasantville Music Festival, a local outdoor rock show a few towns up from us.  We’ve been meaning to go and check it out for years.  It was a fun time, and the venue was very well run.  The festival featured a beer tent and food and a bunch of pretty good if rather low-imagination pop-punk bands on the secondary stage.  On the main stage we saw the Allman-Betts band, an Allman Brothers tribute band by two of the sons of members of the original group.  They played about half originals and half Allman Brothers classics, all very good.  There were some old guys in the band on Hammond organ and slide guitar, that were probably the glue holding the thing together.

The headliner was They Might Be Giants.  I haven’t seen them live in probably twenty years, last time being at a bandshell in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.  They put on a great show, having fun and mixing it up.  Their new songs sound great, and there’s always a twist on their classic hits.  The current touring lineup has a horn section of a trombone, tenor sax and trumpet, all also doubling on other horns such as the euphonium, bari sax and pocket trumpet.  Each of the them had an excellent featured solo.  The trumpet player in particular was amazing, and used to be part of Conon O’Brien’s TV show band.

Also this weekend we got back to doing bike rides.  Sunday I went for sixteen miles, and the girls for ten along the local trail.  On the return half of the ride, suddenly the sky opened up and we got drenched in the pouring rain.  Nothing for it but to keep on riding.  By the end of the trip the sun was coming out again.  We got home, only a ten-minute car ride away, and it hadn’t rained here at all.

While I was upstate, I came up with an album cover for my upcoming record Plutonium Dirigible, and a new web page to go with it, with the latest links to all the songs, as well as the lyrics and stories about writing and recording the various songs.  This led to an update of my whole music site, which will be finished soon.   Enjoy.

Party Like It’s 1999

Had another great weekend.  Continued excellent weather, and for once no big yardwork chores.  All caught up for now; next comes weeding under the hedges.  Saturday we had a barbecue and Nick and Lisa Martin and Kathleen and the kids came over, it was a great time.  

I debuted my summer playlist, as is tradition.  This year the theme was eighty-one favorite songs form the nineties.  This follows from last year’s seventy-seven songs from the seventies and eighty songs from the eighties the year before that.  I must say the 90s seems to have alot more random song and genres from bands the came and went but have not endured so much as bands from the 70s and 80s.  Also not alot in the way of new and interesting jazz.  Maybe it’s because I worked at MTV in the 90s, or maybe it reflects deeper changes in the music industry, technology and popular culture.  Or maybe it’s just that I went thru alot of changes in the 90’s.  I started as a college student, moved across the country several times and lived in three different cities, went to from zero to sky-high to dotcom crash in my career, and ended as a new parent.

Sunday I did a bunch of stuff including take the Mustang for an evening ride due the the long hours of daylight this time of year.  Also switched up my workout to Sunday Tuesday and Thursday this week, since the origami convention starts Friday.

Monday went biking on the Ocean Pathway at Jones Beach.  Nick came out to meet us since he lives nearby.  I did fifteen miles, out to Giglo Beach and back.  Jennie and Michelle made it as far as Tobay Beach.  It felt much easier than last year, when it was only my second or so ride of the season.  I’m up to about ten already this year.  Going for twenty miles next time.  Unfortunately, due to getting a late start and other complications we didn’t go swimming in the ocean.  Ah well, next time.

Lots of origami nowadays too.  I re-folded my stellated icosahedron after ruining the last one my wet-folding.  Just the closing up to go.  Also practicing my spider.  I revised the folding sequence to eliminate the sink of doom and make it teachable, focusing now on the sculpting, especially the legs.  Fun fun fun.

Eighty-One Favorite Nineties Songs

1990
They Might Be Giants – Flood/Birdhouse in Your Soul
Sinéad O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U
Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
The Sundays – Here’s Where the Story Ends
Black Box – Everybody Everybody
Nine Inch Nails – Head Like a Hole
Digital Underground – The Humpty Dance

1991
Bonnie Raitt – Something to Talk About
Tuck & Patti – Dream
Blues Traveller – Onslaught
Rush – Roll the Bones
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Suck My Kiss
The Sugarcubes – Hit
Right Said Fred – I’m Too Sexy
Liz Phair – Flower
Prince + the NPG – Gett Off

1992
Alice in Chains – Them Bones
King’s X – Black Flag
Snow – Informer
Barenaked Ladies – My Box Set
Neil Young – One of These Days
Nirvana – Come as You Are
Ice Cube – It Was a Good Day
10,000 Maniacs – Candy Everybody Wants
En Vogue – My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)
Sir Mix-A-Lot – Baby Got Back
House Of Pain – Jump Around
Megadeath – Sweating Bullets
Ozric Tentacles – Yog-Bar-Og

1993
Sheryl Crow – Solidify
Fishbone – Servitude
Ace Of Base – The Sign
Sting – She’s too Good for Me
Donald Fagan – Snowbound
Frank Zappa – G-Spot Tornado (The Yellow Shark)
Billy Joel – River of Dreams
Phish – Rift
US3 – Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)

1994
Soundgarden – The Day I Tried to Live
The Offspring – Self Esteem
The Revels – Comanche
Soul Coughing – Is Chicago Is Not Chicago
Material – Black Lights (Hallucination Engine)
Dead Can Dance – How Fortunate the Man with None
Seal – Kiss from a Rose
Steely Dan – Book of Liars
King Crimson – VROOOM
The Bobs – Spontaneous Human Combustion
Herbie Hancock – Dis is Da Drum
Beastie Boys – Sure Shot
Animaniacs – All The Words in the English Language

1995
No Doubt – Spiderwebs
Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know
Everclear – Santa Monica
Weezer – Say It Ain’t So
The Beatles – Free as a Bird
Macarena – Los Del Rio (Bayside Boys Remix)
White Zombie – More Human Than Human
Annie Lennox – Something So Right
Medeski Martin and Wood – Friday Afternoon in the Universe

1996
Beck – Devil’s Haircut
Wallflowers – One Headlight
Geggy Tah – Whoever You Are
Know Your Chicken – Cibo Matto
Cake – The Distance
Sneaker Pimps – 6 Underground
Space – The Female of the Species
The Beaux Hunks – Powerhouse
Michael Brecker – African Skies
Oasis – Don’t Look Back in Anger
Johnny Cash – My Wave

1997
Might Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get
Steve & Edyie – Black Hole Sun (Loungapalooza)
Chumbawamba – Tubthumping
Foo Fighters – Everlong
The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony
Sarah McLachlan – Building a Mystery
Smash Mouth – Walking on the Sun
Ben Folds Five – The Battle of Who Could Care Less

1998
Cher – Believe
Fastball – The Way
The Seatbelts – Tank
Brian Setzer Orchestra – Switchblade 327

1999
Weird Al – The Saga Begins

New Song – A Plague of Frogs

The concept for my new song is a battle on the planet Mars between the humans and an alien invader from another solar system.  It’s sort of a mash up of By Tor and the Snow Dog by Rush and I.G.Y. by Donald Fagen.

I’ve been working on this one a while.  In fact I started it during the sessions for Elixr, two albums ago.  And the intro riff has its origins in a piece I did called Futbol Anthem, way back when I worked for an ad agency in the ’90s.

It’s very much an in-the-studio creation, and it takes advantage of ProTools’s ability to make arrangements you’d probably never do with a live group, with shifting meters, stacked synth and drum layers, etc.  Still, the goal is to make a song that’s enjoyable to listen to for the whole nine-plus minutes, an entertaining ride, sorta like a movie for the ears. 

My friend Dazza agreed to do the guitar solo.  In solo section in the middle, the sax represents the humans and the earth, while the guitar represents the aliens on Mars.  They battle it out, trading riffs and building intensity, something like a boss fight in a video game.  Then on to a big unison riff section.

But we’re still recording all that, so for now here are the lyrics.  Enjoy!

A Plague of Frogs (International Space Year)

Peace on Earth – war on Mars!
Epic conflict among the stars
Space invaders from afar
Challenge the humans to keep the red planet ours

Cosmic war – a plague of frogs!
Now descend the Tobes of Zog
Encroaching frozen dessert canyons
Entrenched so they evade our scanners
Vile scourge of the solar system
Even our best star lasers missed ’em
Space ranger battle scarred
Earth needs a new hero to win back dusty crimson Mars

(solo – sax vs. moog)

Peace on Mars – and love on Venus
Humanity at last victorious
Vanquished foes warp back to their home world
The frogs of Zog retreat with their tails curled
Our spaceships free for more peaceful uses
Our scientists can again court their muses
Peace on Earth and victory
But victory is temporary

Humanity in victory
But victory is temporary
Yeah victory is temporary
Oh victory is temporary yeah

– jfs

Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

New York in June continues.  The weather remains amazing for the most part, as if California has come to us.  In fact, last week we experienced the effects of forest fires hundreds of miles away in Canada, as the wind blew the smoke high into the atmosphere above us.  The sky turned overcast and brownish and hazy, and the next day it got more intense, and everything had an orange tint and smelled like a campfire.  Luckily the day after that the wind changed and it blew away, and we were back to blue skies for the weekend.

The Origami USA convention is coming up in just a couple weeks.  It was my job to put together the class schedule.  We had almost 150 classes that had to be fit into three days, with many constraints on time, availability, class size, use of document cameras and projectors, etc.  So that kept me busy Monday night and Tuesday.  It went smoother than last year.  I’m using scheduling software that I’d purpose-built in the OUSA web site, and like so much one-off business software, is more clunky than one would hope.  However this year we’re starting to grasp the essence of the problem, and we’re refining it to make the workflows smoother and faster.  So the schedule got approved and published on time.  On to the next thing.

The Global Jukebox is submitting a grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities for part 2 of a multi-year project to create an interactive experience within the jukebox on The Roots of American Music.  In addition to new content and visualizations, it includes a brand-new mobile experience built on our existing web application framework.  So I was busy helping Kiki get some materials together for the grant application.

Meanwhile at the CR Innovation Lab, we’re getting to planning for an upcoming product launch, setting up a program for deploy pipelines, unit testing, e2e and integration testing, QA, and infrastructure availability and scaling.  We also have a bunch of new team members, so everything is a bit hectic these days.  I went into the city for a set of onsite meetings, however some of them got cancelled to due people calling in remotely because of the smoke condition.  Unfortunately, the conference room chairs there are singularly awful and triggered some fairly severe pain in my back and leg.  Ah well, I was back to normal after a couple days.

Friday night Jeannie and I went to see Kurt Elling at the Village Vanguard.  Before the show we went out a fantastic dinner at a Persian restaurant, with shish kabobs and fancy rice.  We walked around the city from midtown to Greenwich Village.  Great night for people watching and taking in the city.

Kurt Elling is one of my favorite jazz singers around today.  He has a great voice and sense of phrasing and style, and always picks really interesting material and treats it in a fresh and fascinating way.  The Village Vanguard is of course one of the classic jazz clubs in New York City.  What I didn’t know is the Vanguard has an in-house big band that was started back in the 1960’s by Mel Lewis and Thad Jones, and plays every Monday night.  So the show was Kurt backed by the Village Vanguard Orchestra, doing big band arrangements of his songs.  Wow, totally amazing.  (The Vanguard is a very small club, so the fact that the band fit on the stage was pretty amazing before they even played note one.)  

One thing Kurt likes to do is add lyrics over rarely covered jazz songs.  He did this for several tunes, including Continuum by Jaco Pastorius, and the second movement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.  They’re great lyrics that add new depth to song, clever, thoughtful, playful and even profound, but because they’re so unexpected it can take you a minute to figure out what songs he’s doing.  Another highlight of the show was the sax solo during the Coltrane number.  The tenor play at the end of the sax section was a really old guy who looked like Mark Twain.  Half the set he was slumped in his chair and looked like he might fall asleep at a moment’s notice.  But when he stood up, he roared to life and delivered a high-intensity solo worthy of a Trane number.

Saturday morning I listened to two Joco albums: the first one that begins with Donna Lee, and The Birthday Concert which featured the Word of Mouth Big Band including Michael Brecker.  Great stuff.

Saturday afternoon we went out to a barbecue at Cousin Mary’s.  My two nieces Katie and Valerie both graduated from college.  On the car ride down, we listened to Kurt Elling’s latest album Super Blue, which is sorta jazz-adjacent soul funk fusion.  Totally blew me away.  Some of the songs sound like they could be Steely Dan.  And the album before that has the studio cut of Continuum, among others.

Sunday we went for another bike ride.  Jeannie got a new bike, a Trek mountain bike, very nice.  And she passed her old bike on to Michelle, so now everyone has a bike that fits them comfortably and they like to ride.  We went back to the Empire State Trail, this time starting in Elmsford and going up to Thornwood.  They both did ten miles, and I did fifteen, and new personal best for the season for everyone.  I was thinking of getting a new bike too, but my 26-year-old Trek 850 is still going strong.  It was a pretty high-end bike at the time, very light, with an aluminum frame, handlebars and rims, and 21 gears.  (I bought it from Palo Alto bicycles, because at the time Jeannie and I were sharing a car, and she had a longer commute than I did.  Above the bike shop was a small startup called Google, but that’s a story for another time…)

I finally completed the spring yardwork cycle but trimming the branches from the neighbor’s willow tree that hangs down into our yard.  Hopefully a week or two off from that, then the it starts over with weeding and edging.

As mentioned previously, the Origami USA convention is less than two weeks away, and doing origami has finally risen to the top of my todo list.  In fact, now is the time of year when I tend to stay up late folding like a madman.  In fact, I just destroyed a super complex model I’ve been working on since Bogota by trying to wetfold it!  Ah well, at least I have the pattern worked out now.

Yet the universe won’t leave me alone, and in addition to the predictable demands of work and all that, random tasks pop up at inconvenient times.  Jeannie borrowed my car the other day, and came home with a flat tire, so I had to get that fixed.  Then it was supposed to rain and cool off, but the weathermen lied!  So around five o’clock I put in the air conditioner.  It’s a new AC that’s supposed to be much quieter and more powerful than the old one, but it was a major pain to install.  Ah well, now it’s in and I’m enjoying the cool zone.

Rack On

Our run of luck with the nice weather continues, interrupted only last Saturday when it rained all day.  I spent a good chunk of the day doing origami.  I completed the first successful single-sheet stellated icosahedron earlier in the week.  I made out of a 19″ sheet of elephant hide.  I unfolded and refolded the bottom and the lock several times, experimenting until I found an arrangement of the paper that worked best.  The finished model is a bit squished, so Saturday I spend a bunch of time folding a new one now that I know how it goes at the finish.  This one is out of 15″ mohawk skytone paper, given to me by my friend Madonna.  It’s a very nice paper, a bit thinner than elephant hide, but just as strong and crisp, and in a variety of nice soft colors.  This one is almost finished, just the final collapse to go.  With luck it will be an exhibit quality model, just in time for this year’s OUSA convention.

Michelle came home from college Saturday.  we immediately rebooted family game night.  We also finally also finished Muppets Mayhem.  Now Michelle is baking a cake.  Nice ot have her home.

I got three bike rides in last week during the week.  Then went for another bike ride with Jeannie Sunday morning, on the same pathway but this time starting in Yonkers.   This time Michelle came with us.  Jeannie thought her bike was too tall for her, so she tried riding Michelle’s.  She thought that was too small, although Michelle likes Jeannie’s bike. (Michelle is about six inches taller than Jeannie, although they were around the same height when I bought Michelle her bike.)  Anyway, Jeannie is now shopping for a new bike.

I went 12 miles although Jeannie and Michelle both turned around earlier.  Afterward I came home and did a bunch of yardwork, including washing the Mustang and putting armorall on the new tires.  Ah how it all gleamed, for one brief shining moment.  I left it out in the driveway for a few hours and by time it was already dusted in tree pollen.  Ah well.  I also trimmed my hedges, which involved going up and down a ladder and swinging around a trimmer over my head for a few hours.  By the end I was pretty tired.

In jazz land, Steve, the old drummer for my group Spacecats had to leave for health reasons. This was unfortunate because he was an excellent drummer, a great guy and a good friend.  Luckily, we got a new drummer a couple months ago, and he’s been working out well.  His name is Rick, and he’s a friend of our bassist Ken. He’s an excellent player, great chops, great groove, very responsive and energetic.  He also writes, and is into alot of the same kind of stuff we are, not just jazz but fusion, rock, prog, and jazz-adjacent funky jam bands, and likes experimenting with bringing those sounds into the group.  Last week our piano player Josh couldn’t make rehearsal, so we got together as a trio, sax bass and drums.   It was super fun exploring different sounds and ideas.  We did tune by Stone Alliance called Sweetie Pie for just such a set of instrumentation.  Also ran Some Skunk Funk a few times, getting it fast and tight.  I think it’s time to start looking for gigs.