Fiddlin’

Posted on March 30, 2009

I love the fiddle, always have,  and I’ve wanted a fiddler in Beltaine’s Fire from day 1.  unfortunately, we’ve never been able to find a good one that has a solid attitude and can deal with the fact that we don’t get paid reliably because we’re a local independent band.  so i’ve decided to learn myself.   which i guess means my slow but steady transformation into a bonified folk musician is destined to continue.  i don’t know if the world is ready for a rapping fiddler or a fiddling rapper, but that’s never really stopped me before.

anyway.

so far it’s a lot of fun and a *lot* of work.  kind of expensive too, so far I’m in about $300 for the violin itself, new strings, a new bow, and a few other odds and ends,  plus $50 a week for lessons.

my teacher (Michael Mullen – one of my favorite celtic fiddlers on the west coast and someone you may recognize from his guest appearances on my band’s first album) assures me it’ll be at least 5 years, probably closer to 10, of intense study before I should even think about bringing my instrument on stage.  which kind of defeats the reason I wanted to pick it up in the first place.  except that I’m just stubborn enough to think I can probably do it sooner if I’m as obsessive compulsive about this as I am about most other things in my life. we’ll see.  I’ve got a bad history of getting really excited about instruments, playing for a while, then getting bored and moving on to something else, but I think that’s partly because I’ve been so broke for so long I haven’t been able to afford lessons and there’s only so far you can get being self-taught.  now though I’ve got at least a little bit of financial security and can afford lessons so no excuses – I’m going to need to put some serious work in.

anyway, that’s all my news.  hope ya’ll are enjoying the sunshine.  it’s a beautiful day here in oakland and I’m gonna go spend some time outside before it gets dark.

In Defense of Stupid People

Posted on March 27, 2009

I was talking to a friend today and heard myself make a offhand comment about ’stupid people’, something in reference to our society  being typically shortsighted and destructive in its consumption of precious resources and production of waste.   As I said it something struck me – the problem isn’t stupid people and blaming society’s ills on ’stupid people’ is really just a cop out and a way to avoid looking at the real issues.  There are plenty of folks who just plain aren’t that bright who have enough common sense to know you shouldn’t shit where you sleep, a lesson that millions of folks who can boast at least an average IQ score still haven’t learned, as evidenced by their willingness to drive giant cars that polute the air they breathe and purchase products whose production poisons the biosphere we all depend on to survive.  People who lack intelligence aren’t our problem, smart people who refuse to put down their illusions and look at the world the way it really is are the problem.

To clarify, I don’t mean ’stupid’ like people who vote Republican because they want to be safe from terrorism or Democrat because they think doing so will result in significant concession to Labor or environmental stewardship – that sort of deliberate self-deception goes in a category all its own;  I mean folks who just plain aren’t particularly bright because they were born with any of a range of disabilities that interfere with the development of normal cognitive function but don’t make them any less human or in any way diminish their ability to feel pain from the scorn heaped on them by society .   Think about it – why is it ok to discriminate against people with less then average intelligence?  This is a serious question and it deserves serious examination.

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Ringtones, copyrights, and more.

Posted on March 26, 2009

Allright, so  i got this cool new cellphone that can play songs as ringtones.  No,  i didn’t go out and buy it (who has money for that kind of thing right now anyway?  not me…)  i got it for free.   One of my clients from my design business ordered a bunch and it turned out he didn’t need as many as he thought he would so he gave me one of the extras as a thank-you because he was happy with work I’d done.  So that’s cool, fancy new tech without the fancy bill.  fun times.  Thing is, when I go to add songs it turns out I can’t use my own mp3’s as ringtones, i can only use special songs that  i have to pay to download.

Now it just so happens that, thanks to the digital distribution my band is currently getting, it is in fact possible to download Beltaine’s Fire songs and use them as ringtones, but in order to do so I have to pay an additional $10 a month in a subscription fee for a service that I’m not otherwise interested in.  All this is done in the name of “protecting the artist” and preventing “piracy”.

Now, granted, it is an additional revenue stream for artists and with the industry the way it is maybe I shouldn’t complain, it’s hard enough to get paid as a musician already and I’d be lying if i said I wouldn’t like to make a living doing what I love.   Still, I can’t help feeling like there’s something fundamentally wrong when I can’t add a song that I wrote about my partner to my phone to use as a ringtone for when she calls me without paying some distant faceless corporation for the privilege.

It’s not like it’s the end of the world or even particularly signficant, but it struck me as a perfect example of how copyright law is twisted to serve the interests of corporations by forcibly inserting a middle  man in between the artist and the listener.