Underwhelmed by the main stage acts this year. I guess Flaming Lips spoiled me. The rain didn't help much (especially friday) but I found myself outside the main stage area more this year than last year, and tended to be interested and enjoying the free stage acts more. A great case in point was the Envy Corp - playing a free stage for the second year running, they absolutely packed the parking lot of the DSM Social club (where the west stage was) and I know they had folks coming in early and sticking around through sound check and such to see THEM. They not only have interesting and infectious music - but they really know how to create "moments" I can see why they have such a great following, and if they are on the bill next year, it might be a wise time to move them over to the main stage area. I think they're ready.

I also discovered some great new acts I hope to see more of in some way:

1. Baby Teeth - Chicago based pop trio (Drums, Bass, Keys) fun catchy stuff.
2. Miss Derringer - Fun post-punk, girl band influenced band. Reminded me a bit of the Ravonettes
3. Girl in a Coma - San Antonio based trio. Really good punk based pop.

2 and 3 are apparently touring together atm.

I ended up buying all of Baby teeth's CDs, wanted to get Miss Derringer's, but got pulled away and then couldn't find their CD at the main merch tent :-( I'll Look it up later.

It'll be a few days before it shows up to the public, but I've been informed they have the initial shipment now.

DemiCon and the related craziness really sapped me this year, but in a good way. It was a lot of fun as always, and it keeps getting better to re-connect with with these folks I see about once a year.

Felt pretty good about the band performance, though we ended up dropping an SL song (Ballad of Ruth) unintentionally - when I checked on time w/ Eric and he said 2 I looked at our list and thought we were there - I enjoy Ruth, but glad I got to do the title track from the new CD ("Mr. Lincoln").

Not sure if the Effort to get the SL broadcast going was worth it though, I kinda felt like we had to keep the show moving forward as quickly as possible to make it through the set list and the way the monitor was situated I didn't really have a good chance to interact w/ the SL audience, and had no time to get out notices. I hope it sounded OK.

Was very happy to see gamerchick did indeed "bring it" at circle last night, and was glad that I suggested "Rogue" as her last song - it's one of my favorites from her "All My Heros are Villains" CD.

It was great meeting and getting to play a bit w/ her band mates (freeimprov & ogsnart).

Eric played "Hides" last night in circle, and it's always interesting to hear what happens w/ that song in a jam. I had a lot of fun figuring out ways to play along w/ it w/o having to retune in DADGAD, just put a capo on 5 - think it worked really well. Lots of really great interaction going on w/ that one.

freeimprov asked about covering my song "The Art of Being a Ninja" last night for his other band w/ ogsnart - The Feng Shui Ninjas - I think that would be a hoot. I'll try and embed a youtube video of me doing that solo acoustic for their reference.



I did manage to drag myself out the Door to Simo's (close to the house) for their Sunday night open mic - was nice and casual, got some great comments. I'll try and pull an ericcoleman and list my set:

Let Go of the Monkey (Frank noted a similarity to Greg Brown, I'm flattered)
Closing Time at the Roadhouse
Meet You in our Dreams
I Want to be a Canadian (Lorie Ann wants lyric sheets, or at least to hear it a few more times so she can sing along)

New CD (Mr. Lincoln) is off to the duplicators.
Band has been working on the set list now for a few weeks.
I'm typing on the iMac we'll be using for the show.
Things are starting to fall into place.

Looking forward to seeing several of you again, and meeting some new people, and of course playing in Circle. I really do hope gamerchick gets a few songs in edgewise in circle this year, been re-listening to her CD, which has some great songs on it. Now that the CD is out of my hands maybe I'll sit down and try to learn "hidden track".

I'm feeling really good about the new CD.

Trivia: it has a song on it that was inspired by something I overheard at last years DemiCon: "Let go of the Monkey" is now a song (and will be performed by me and my band).

Awesome, awesome show. I am now officially a Flaming Lips fan. I liked them before, but this was a really great concert experience. And I'm not just saying that because they seem to have convinced a goodly contingent of females to paint their bodies and run around in nothing but panties and band-aids.

I think this festival will really help kick up Des Moines place in the region (among younger adults) I think it's fulfilling it's goal really well. Amadeo and the other folks in DMMC that put this together should be applauded, loudly, not just by music fans, but by those who want to see Des Moines and it's arts scene thrive.

Congrats DMMC for a great first day of 80/35!

We managed to nab a room on floor 7 so, I'll be able to get most of the worst of the moving done tonight. I was pretty bummed when I couldn't get us rooms, so I was pretty amazed when we got this one. Woot! Now we'll be able to "get" more of the whole DemiCon experience.

I'm on the mend from the crud, thanks to the z-pack I got from the Dr. yesterday, and am working on finalizing arrangements for DemiCon. I'm planning on trying something that requires a set list be finalized, and I'm thinking this is it:

Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning
Transported
King of the World
Moving Sidewalk Life
Big Bad World
Ballad of Ruth
Mr. Lincoln
Furry Lolita of Gor
Closing Time at the Roadhouse
Meet You In Our Dreams
Cyber Me

The only cover is the first one (and I always add a Second Life verse to it) I've linked to live versions of all that I have live versions of and a few others that full versions are out on the net for. Any comments? Requests? peeps?

The elevator sank quietly into the shaft. His spirits racing ahead of it. As it came to rest at the lobby his spirits continued into the abyss. The doors slid open silently. He clicked across the sterile marble and glass space and stepped out into the street.

It was a cool night and the grates in the street billowed forth a steady cloud of steam.

It made him pause to wonder: What would life in the sewer be like?

Could he just fake a really bad accident, set up some kind of secret lair, become the phantom of Wall street?

I need to get more blogging going, so I thought I'd join in on the meme ericcoleman brought to my attention:

"Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other!"

and to kick things off I'll cheat and use one of the questions he got as well:

"Tell me about your appreciation for the traditional arts. Do you like art, theatre, opera, classical music, etc? What do you like or not like about it?"

Art: I'm pretty well versed, especially in late 19th - late 20th century art. My favorites are the Surrealists and the Dadaists - I love putting the world on its ear, especially with the attention to detail that Dali (my favorite) or Magrite put forth. In general I like most art (even a fair amount of current stuff), though I do have a bit of a bias against anything where you have to get an explanation from the artist. Having gone through grad school at CalArts (in theatre) I overheard too many Art school students talking about how they faked their way through the seminar when they had no new project, and grabbed some random trash and talked about it.

Theatre: Both my wife an I have MFAs in tech theatre. We met in grad school. I love Shakespeare (of course) Lear is a favorite tragedy, I have a soft spot for Henry IV for the histories, outside of "the bard" I had a great time doing a show called "Ghosts" that was very free-form and (I was a composer/ sound designer) I actually personally "ran" the show, since I was improvising ambient processing and doing live SFX in real time including open piano molestation (using it like a harp) lots of other great shows, but those are some that stick out. I'd love to go back into it, but I like keeping my family under a roof too.

Opera: I have mixed feelings about. I started college as a Vocal performance major (the slang was "throat") and I learned a great deal of appreciation for the craft of that and for the music itself, but I never really liked singing that way and eventually got much more into composition anyway. Favorite is probably The Magic Flute - there is some truly wonderful music going on in that opera and it takes a hell of a soprano to do the Queen of the night. I don't seek it out though, haven't since I stopped being compelled, so it never really took I guess.

Classical Music: I'm not a baroque guy. Eric is, but not me. It's breathtaking sometimes, but most of the time it's too "pure" for my tastes. I'm much more Renaissance, and then skipping over most of the rest of the period before the early 20th. Some of the very late romantic stuff is great, but I love Charles Ives, John Cage changed my perceptions of music immeasurably and I also love a lot of the early electro acoustic stuff (music concrete, etc.)

I thought it was an interesting question, though as you can maybe see, not exactly outside my comfort zone.

So, if anyone is reading this stuff, ask me something. I need to get blogging. Or maybe not. I don't know.

He rose from his desk. Alone in the building, it was that quiet time,
before the cleaning crew came but after even the most dedicated employee packed it in.

His legs quivered as he rose. Would he have the nerve to go through with it?
This was going to take planning but he had to get it done before things hit the fan.

He stepped through the doors of his corner office, to make his way through cube land,
confronted by the remains of Charley's cake.

Poor guy, wasn't going to enjoy retirement as much as he'd thought this afternoon.

---

Another 100 word story challenge, continued from last weeks.

I just did a 100 word story challenge from this site: http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2008/03/weekly_challenge_99_hemmorhage.html

The subject is "hemorrhage" (that's the challenge). This is my first attempt at this art form.

It was a hemorrhage. Red ink filled up the balance sheet, there was no end in sight.

He stared and stared at it, somehow hoping that by sheer force of will he could make the numbers rise, but there was no hope.

There was nothing left to be done. He was ruined, his family would be picking up the pieces for years to come, and he was to blame.

There was his insurance, but it wouldn't pay for suicide. He had to figure out how he could salvage something of his existence, but it HAD to look like an accident.

---

If you like it, please consider going over to http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com and casting a vote for my story there (within the next few days). The winner gets to chose the subject for the episode following the next.

I've been getting into a music discovery site:

http://www.thesixtyone.com/KaklickMartin/

The tagline there is something like:
If Guitar hero is about shredding, thesixtyone is about A&R.

You can be an Artist or a Listener - or have 2 accounts, 1 of each.

it's kind of a "game" since listeners get points to "bump" songs with, and one way is by bumping early on songs others end up bumping.

I Finally broke down and bought a Martin Guitar, using my ninja like deal making skilz I got, what I consider a pretty good deal (it helps to know the places that actually have fiscal year ending 12/31) it's a DC-16GTE. I went in to maybe get one of the newer composite ones, but they just didn't "speak" to me. Guess I know where all my SL tip money is going for a while, and in a Luke Ski moment: Buy my CDS! (or downloads):

http://cdbaby.com/all/kaklick
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=218127264

I've got a guitar to pay off now.

I turned on this account mostly to post replies to posts. Thought I ought to post something here of my own. Not much of a blogger. So, anyone have any idea what I should classify my music as? I've been terrible at it and have been diverting that to the individual albums. (Big Bad World is political, Roadhouse Ranch & Saloon is, well roadhouse-y). I think maybe the best "big pot" term I should use is "Americana". What do you think (though, come tho think of it, there are only a few copies of my CDs circulating in the world at this point.