Category: stories and more

Bernie met us at the door.

“We close in an hour. An hour isn’t long enough.”

I had been cheered by the fact that we walked through the front doors without being charged, but over Bernie’s shoulder I saw the Admissions desk with its $5 fee posted. $5 isn’t much, but we didn’t have it. I didn’t tell Bernie.

To prove his point, Bernie, one of the docents, took us on a lightening tour. Ten minutes later, it was clear that, as my brother is wont to say, the admission would be cheap at twice the price.

Breaking the last century arbitrarily into 5 eras, displays throughout the museum contain over 450 instruments and and endless variety of interactive exhibits. The Martin guitar display boasts one of two 045 Jimmy Rodgers Martins and Eric Clapton’s 000-28 Martin acoustic. As you walk into the lobby, there’s an acrylic piano you can play and watch the interior mechanisms working. The north half of the hall ends with an interactive area where you can play an electric guitar, electronic drums or a clavinova.

We plan on going back and spending a long, long day. If you find yourself anywhere near San Diego’s north county, do the same.

The Museum of Making Music
5790 Armada Drive
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Phone: 760.438.5996
For hours, admission costs, directions, and more, see http://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/explore/information.html

It’s been 300 days since I posted Overture and gave my obsession a voice.

Isaac Asimov, author of nearly 400 books, used his 100th as a retrospective of his impressive accomplishment; few authors ever reach their centennial publication. Asimov’s “Opus 100” is essentially his personal musings on those of his writings he was particularly fond of (or particularly embarrassed about.) I’m just cocky enough to take a page from his book.

Welcome to “Hundredth Note.” And, no, I don’t know what kind of time signature that would require.

My server logs show 8,346 visitors of whom 1,140 seem to be semi-regulars. Haven’t received a single response to my invitation at the end of Still Haven’t Found What You’re Looking For? Come on; tell me who and where you are. I promise, I don’t bite, I don’t spam. Just curious who y’all are.Some hopes have yet to achieve fruition. We haven’t seen an official album from Walkingbirds. Haven’t received my copy of King L’s Great Day for Gravity but at least the new vendor had it in stock, and claims to have shipped it. No decisions on Paris or Alaska; no ears nibbled; no links fixed. Still haven’t gone to see Wally’s Swing World.

Random thoughts on reviews I hope you didn’t miss:

• My favorite: Scheherazade—Still the best combination of pop/rock and classical music ever accomplished; still thrilling, musically and lyrically. If I could witness only one live musical event for the rest of my life, without hesitation I would choose Renaissance performing “Scheherazade.”
• The David Gray collection—See the Sun Spreading Wings of Gold, Putting Flesh on the Bones of My Dreams, and Falling Free. David’s music, lyrics, and performing inspire me.
• I took more than one trip during the past 300 days, most to visit friends and scenery in Arizona. One of those trips, along with things happening in my own life, gave rise to While I’m Far From Home, whose first paragraph feels more real every day.
• It was touching that the first serious attempt I’ve made at writing about my father’s death solicited the first response I’ve gotten from the artist in question.
• Twas fun to be mentioned in Mike Nesmith’s official newsletter after my review of Laugh Kills Lonesome
• Desafinado was one of the songs which drove my need to write about the music that inspires me. I failed utterly to put into words the delirious joy I feel every single time I hear this unique song. Please, find Desafinado, get your favorite cold beverage, mentally put yourself on a sunny Brazilian beach, and experience one of the seminal moments in modern music.
• On the other hand, Enya’s Na Laetha Geal M’Óige

Some geeky statistics: though a hundred entries in three hundred days is an average of one post every three days, eleven times I’ve gone more than a week without posting; the longest was 13 days. I’m working on that. 60% of the time I posted in less than three days, but those slack times bring down the average.

Catching up on some old business—Our links list has a couple new entries, courtesy of Bobbi and Benjer.

Bobbi recommends the Jack Brothers—a huge proportion of their tunes are downloadable, so you can be pretty familiar with their work before you buy.

Benjer’s link to GEMM was really helpful right now. I discovered recently that my long-awaited copy of King L’s “Great Day for Gravity” wasn’t going to ship, and I found more than one copy at GEMM. As Benjer says, it’s “an exhaustive database for music lovers”—and a great resource for hard–to–find music.

From Bobbi:”My very favorite Jack Brothers cd is “Nivose” and it has two really great songs, “Jattebra” (I think it means “perfection” in Swedish) and “Min Lilla Ros” (words are something like “there was black there was dark there was nothing there was snow … then there was you, my little rose”-but sung to music that makes you want to ride a truck in circles under the desert stars in the middle of the night!) Then most of the songs on “Ventose” are good-they’re mostly in English and they’re the funniest take on the blues! I especially love “Hole In Your Pocket Blues.”There’s also a song on “Germinal” called “Under Finspangs Boar” that I love-I love it because as they’re singing it they switch back and forth between major and minor chords (vocally) which kind of tweaks your emotions-cyclical responses.

Reload/refresh this page. That’s F5 in IE or Opera, CTRL-R in Netscape or Mozilla. Go ahead; we’ll wait.

Notice the musical quote under the logo? We’ve added a geeky database of musical quotes and a function to randomly drop a quote into that spot every time a page is loaded.

And for the truly adventurous, the snippet is a link to further info.

Weve finally added a links page. It even has links. It even has a link to the links.

Found a great music site? How about an indie artist? Fee Waybill’s real name? We’d love to hear about it. If your suggestion fits our needs, you’ll get the thrill of seeing your name right here on Know Your Music.