the last Gilbert Tuesday? . . .

A half day at CRAS Gilbert. I chose a Patty Griffin tune that I recently fell in like with. An actual ballad.

Go Now

Go To FileFactory.com

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Ancient FM

I've been listening to this internet radio station in the background. Anyone interested in ancient music performed on authentic instruments should check it out.

Ancient FM

Sam Harris lecture . . .

soca/calypso ting ...

Interesting day at the ranch. Dowell was particularly combative. I basically just ignored him. It's what works best with most difficult people.

Mario and Ted had another hit, so John Chapman came in and we finished off the day as a quintet. The result was funkier than I expected it would be (Billy did a great job of listening). It's a Sarah Harmer tune.

Go To FileFactory.com

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AJLevine on the historical Jesus . . .

During a program in which Amy Jill Levine was interviewed on the topic "Who Was Jesus of Nazareth" she says:

In terms of what I do historically ... what I hope to have happen is . . . when studying the texts with me . . . individuals: Christian, Unitarian, Jewish, atheist, Muslim ... whoever . . . will be able to see in fact the different portraits of Jesus that are available and rotate not only the concerns about . . . you know . . . . 'he died in order that my sins be washed away' . . . . but go back prior to the cross and see what sort of life he lived as well as death he died, because it seems to me that unless we take this historical Jesus here defined as the entire Jesus story, seriously and only concentrate on the cross ... and only concentrate on the resurrection, we've done a disservice to Jesus ... we've certainly done a disservice to the New Testament, which gives us a fourfold story, and I think that we've done disservice to God as well in terms of how faith has to have some sort of action to it.

Forget who is speaking for a moment and stand back and read the words again. This could be an encapsulation of the position taken by Paul's opponents regarding his obsession with the cross as the central metaphor in Jesus-adoration.

Just an observation.

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the March Fourth Marching Band . . .

I danced.

A lot.

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CRAS 6tet . . .

Go to folder - FileFactory.com

The morning session is a Bjork tune that I wanted to try. - Joga

For the afternoon session, I went with the Gabriel tune. - Mercy Street

Today's sextet:

• Chris
• Ted
• Mario
• Dowell
• Billy
• i & i & i

Jones was behind the board in the morning— Tony in the afternoon.
A pretty good day.

enjoy

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current . . .

Reading:

• Torah and Canon - James A Sanders
• Chapters in a Life of Paul - John Knox
• The Uses of The Old testament in the New - Walter Kaiser Jr
• The Jews Among the Greeks & Romans - Margaret H. Williams
  
• The Bible as Literature - Bruckner B Trawick
• The Mythmaker - Hyam Maccoby

close encounter of the first kind . . .

Just a brief note to commemorate —before I forget—what happened on Wednesday (the 2^nd) while I waited for the afternoon class to get ready to record (it was the Bobby Fraser 10th cycle clinic).

In brief, I saw a UFO that day. It was about 5 P.M.

Funny thing is, I'm a skeptic from heck, so go figure. But it definitely wasn't an airplane or anything that I could identify. It was round and emitted its own light, radiant enough to make bright azure daytime sky pale in contrast.

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Eddie Kramer @ the Gilbert campus ...

I went to listen to Eddie Kramer speak at the Gilbert campus of the school earlier tonight. He is in his late sixties and he looks fantastic—quite healthy, he confessed to working out religiously—and he sounds as lucid as the 400 or so youngsters (most in their 20s and 30s) that came to see him. He's on tour promoting a new line of Waves plugins bearing his name: the Eddie Kramer Bundle. They demoed the various plugins, using three different pro-tools files. I have used Waves plugins before. They are fantastic plugins— extremely versatile, sonically pleasing— but they are not the easiest tools to use intuitively. By contrast, these Eddie Kramer models were designed to be as simple as possible to operate. His whole m.o. seems to be, 'Just twiddle the knobs and use your ears'.

Hopefully, what the students in attendance learned from him is that that, as childishly simple as it sounds, is pretty much it. I mean, plugins and gear are nice but nothing can replace a creative and resourceful mind. There were no plugins in '67, after all.

Listening to Kramer tell stories about recording some of the most enduring rock bands of our era—Beatles, Hendrix, Stones, Kinks, Les Zep, Traffic— was enjoyable. He seems to be one of those genuinely intellectually curious people whose enthusiasm is contagious. He's down to earth and agreeable.

I'm glad I went

(oh yeah, and world famous jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco was in attendance too. Kramer saluted him and extended an invitation to play on a rock record, which DeFrancesco accepted . . . . history in the making, ladies and gentlemen :)

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weird Jesus #5

—Jesus of Siberia

Back in 1989, as the Soviet regime was collapsing, a man from the Siberian town of Minusinsk, named Sergei Torop, lost his job as a traffic cop. Shortly after that he had a vision, a vision in which he discovered that he was in fact the second coming of Jesus. He changed his name to Vissarion, giving his first public sermon in August of 1991.

When asked how he knew he was the new messiah, he answered, "It's interesting but very complicated; I feel something violently surging up from within me that had been held down until then."

"What happens to man when he wakes up and understands he is a man and not an elephant? How can he explain what has happened to him?" he added, laughing.

It's the darndest thing. Ain't it?

Read the whole story from AFP

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quote of the day . . . .

Question:

What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?

Answer:

Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.

Told to me earlier by my friend J-Cut

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hilarious irony . . . .

According to a study just conducted, people who regularly engage in multi-media multitasking (i.e. . . . simultaneous texting, chatting, emailing, surfing, etc) scored significantly lower in tests devised to determine multitasking ability than did people who don't engage in this kind of multitasking.

That's rich!

This reminds me of the words of that great twentieth century prophet, George Carlin, who wrote:

"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

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as seen on YouTube . . .

I love this job . . .

Today was the Mike Jones, Chris Gough, Tony Nunes 9th cycle sextet session. Billy is out of town, so we brought in Silence as a sub and thus kept it a sextet (this was Mario's idea, but I told him I'd steal it).

Ladies and gentlemen, live from Gilbert, Arizona . . . los one take ponies:

• piano - Chris Gough
• bass - Mario Mendevil
• kit - Dowell Davis
• sax - Theo Belledin
• vox & guitar - i & i & i

Thematically, both of these songs have to do with the problem of piety and its correlations.

Morning session - I Don't Believe

A tune from the last Paul Simon album. Kind of a heartfelt faith affirmation from an agnostic point of view.

Acts of kindness
Like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale forest
Lead us past dangers
As the light melts the darkness

But I don't believe
And I'm not consoled
I lean closer to the fire
But I'm cold

The earth was born in a storm
The waters receded and the mountains were formed
The universe loves a drama, you know
And, ladies and gentlemen, this is the show

I got a call from my broker
My broker informed me I'm broke
I was dealing my last hand of poker
My cards were as useless as smoke

Oh
Guardian angel
Don't taunt me like this
On a warm summer's evening as soft as a kiss
My children are laughing
Not a whisper of care
My love is brushing her long chestnut hair

I don't believe
That a heart can be filled to the brim
Then vanish like a mist
As if life were a whim

And maybe the heart is part of the mist
And that's all that there is or could ever exist
And maybe and maybe and maybe some more
Maybe is the exit I'm looking for

I got a call from my broker
My broker said he was mistaken
Maybe a virus, or a brokerage joke
And he hopes that my faith isn't shaken

Oh
Acts of kindness
Like rain in a drought
Release the spirit with a whoop and a shout

I don't believe
We were born to be sheep in a flock
To pantomime prayers
With the hands of a clock

Amen! (Frank Rowland was circling about with a videocam, so there might be some video coming on this one—you'll get to see me all unshaven with headphones on . . . . stay tuned)

Afternoon session - Eminence Front

Sometimes . . .
People forget they're hiding . . .
behind an eminence front.

That weird sound at the end is a backwards piano. (we had a little fun at the end of the session :)

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quote of the day (fortune cookie wisdom) ...

"Help people reach full potential.
Catch them doing something right."

Amen to that!

(b-side: learn Chinese: Kou Wei = 'taste')

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pésame . . .

He was 94 years old. May he rest in peace.

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