Stereo update

In an attempt to keep our now one-year-old son from injuring himself, I have decommissioned my crazy person stereo for now. Alas. I've replaced it with a weird little compact Japanese thing that I got out of the free bin at a yard sale. It is tiny and has a minidisc recorder (!) If the built-in CD player also worked, that would be pretty great, but at least I can line-in a Cqromeqast Audio or a tape player. Anyway, not having that crazy stereo around has, for some reason, made me feel a lot calmer. I miss it, and I miss playing disco LPs for my baby, but I'll set it up in my office at some point.

I am glad that my bowing-to-reality stereo setup is just as ridiculous and janky - if not more so - than its predecessor. Just smaller.

First birthday

Today was my boy's first birthday. We hung out with the grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins and ate cake. He took it all in (including the swirl of excitement from three cousins) with an air of calm bemusement, even the cake. So sweet. Here is a picture.

Songs for Birds

And as if on cue, after talking about listening to my own juvenilia, the universe spits this out:

Yak (&): Songs for Birds

A compilation I made for legendary British tape label Traumatone back in, hmm, 1994 or so? It features just-post-high-school album A House with a Garden, plus various bits and pieces, some unreleased. The Winchester Geese classic "Gumby Dreams of Assault Weapons" had previously included a snippet from legendary X-rated comedy film Wham-Bam, Thank You Spaceman, but now it gets the line:

I am a ninny
And I am too skinny
And I don't watch enough TV

Two out of three still hold true!

Anyway, probably worth listening to, I guess? It is not too mortifying.

On listening to one's own music

Yes, I listen to my own music all the time. That's why I make it.

When Eric and I invented Activity Universal (Associates), our express purpose was to make music for washing dishes to. I think it worked particularly well for that purpose. Nobody else was making music that I wanted to wash dishes to. So we made six and a half albums of dishwashing music (plus a lot of outtakes that have never been shared for some reason).

I remember reading some David Lee Roth interview a while back where he talked about never wanting to listen to his albums after he made them. Like, he'd worked too hard on them, burned out on them already. That seems crazy to me. I guess I can imagine being a little too burned out if I'd spent two weeks in some smoke-filled 80s studio dialing in a perfect bass drum sound, but fortunately I just press buttons and bass drum sounds come out without much effort on my part.

Activity Universal and Cosmonox

My car album of choice for the last week or so has been Activity Universal's Flee, the last album Eric and I recorded as a duo before Jason brought his scintillating rhythms on board.*  What a crazy album, totally maddening. Really a terrible choice for driving around, especially with a baby in the back, but also a pretty great choice for driving around, particularly with a baby in the back. There is something great about turning three seconds of audio samples into eight minutes of mesmerizing repetition. Anyway, I'm very proud of it. There are moments where it goes so far into the weeds that they start to look like a garden. Free for download from the Internet Archive at the link above (and give the I.A. a few bucks while you're there).

It's interesting to compare this album to the Cosmonox stuff that Jason and I have been doing lately (and please note that Cosmonox is playing on Jan. 12 at the Firkin Tavern). Cosmonox's 4-track tape-based approach allows for more dramatic changes - choruses, bridges, sudden dropouts, etc. - and Jason has a strong sense of pop songcraft in how he makes the tapes. So it feels worlds apart in some ways from Activity Universal, even though it's basically the same idea -  bookish hermit takes educational audio device and abuses three seconds of audio until the song is done eight minutes later.

*See next post for comments on listening to one's own music.

Afternoon naps

So, uh, I'm a stay-at-home dad now for this really great boy? I'm totally not above adding cute baby pictures to this blog. This was taken right after li'l dude took a two-hour nap on my chest. Sometimes I'll wake him up from an afternoon nap and then he'll fall asleep again in my arms after I give him some milk, and then I'll lie down on the couch and he'll snooze there, warm and quietly snorfling, and I'll bring out the book or the phone or the antiquated handheld video game system that I've conveniently stashed nearby, and I'll read or browse or play for hours, and it is just the best thing not to have the option not to goof off.

Gochujang and the boldness of shapes

The boy and I went to an estate sale thing in a Milwaukie strip mall* today. Not too much of interest, but they had a particularly sexy vintage staple remover** for 30 cents, plus some of the deceased's as-yet unexpired foods. The (presumably) Korean woman at the register looked a little surprised that I was buying it. She told me that I should immediately go and buy some roasted sesame oil if I was going to make bibimbap. On my way out the door she said "Bye-bye gochujang," possibly to the baby, possibly to the actual gochujang. I will need to use that line.

(*It was being held in a space that formerly held "Susie's Baby Outlet." When Joanie and I would drive past that sign, we'd always chuckle in our most Buttheady voices. We are horrible.)

(**Staple removers are the sexiest office products because they are dangerous. This one is particularly sexy in spite of its beigeness.)

The boy has a "Brainy Baby Laptop" with the requisite buttons and lights. When you "boot up" this laptop in "shapes" mode, it plays a little song that goes like this:

Look around and you will seeeeeee
A world full of bold
and colorful shapes

It doesn't work. The second half of the jingle feels like it's 1.7 times as long as the first part, like a sweater with one arm too long. And for what? To cram the word "bold" in there? In what sense are shapes bold? Stupid lumpy jingle!!!!!