Proceed as if they give a damn

Here is a mixtape of songs made back in Denvertown. Most have been sitting out in the open over on the Cloud of Sound*, but why not collect them into a proper album? Just follow the recipe: sequence tunes, give it a title, add packaging, release!

Notes on these tunes (download here):

  1. A slivery, spare tunelet plucked and keyed, and truth is I recorded this as a backing track for something else. But there’s beauty in a simple thing. Like a circle.
  2. Strange, but true: I actually do now live on a sort of cul-de-sac, and I am also at this writing a sitting member on the board of the HOA. The rest of this song, however, is (still) fiction.
  3. My neighbor in Denver had an old Pontiac Grand Prix SJ parked on the street for years (likely still does). Summer sun baked away its factory sheen, and winter snow made its sharp angles all the stranger. That car and its shifting stillness is at least a little bit behind this arpeggiated experiment for two stringed instruments and an app called Bebot.
  4. Always thought I might do more with this one, perhaps add a second voice, make a video, but alas. Fun fact: I recorded the vocals on a commute to work, waiting for the 27 when it still went across Yale Ave. in south Denver. Listen closely, and you’ll hear.
  5. Another tune that could be bigger, longer … but better? Maybe not. This one is dedicated Uncle Rick.
  6. A song to follow “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” when the man-who-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer finally realizes no is the answer.
  7. John Dowland plugs in his hollow body electric guitar in a quiet Quonset hut and plays us this lament.

The world is jam-packed with homemade music, and your freetime is limited. On behalf of Kingsize Beast, thank you for listening. Proceed as if they give a damn.

Batseasons

Then: I’ve seen Michael Keaton’s first Batman movie, but she hasn’t. It is our first date, and we decide to go to dinner at Twin Dragon and then the movie. But we talk and talk until late. The restaurant closes, and we never see Batman.

Now: I’ve seen Christian Bale’s first Batman movie, but she hasn’t. We’ve been married 28 years, and I talk her into streaming the movie after dinner at home. But we won’t give Amazon another $14.99 just to see it. I go to bed early, and we never see Batman.

Picking up. Again.

A few weeks back I was reminded the #1 rule in radio is still a secret, but it holds fast:

Don’t be an asshole.

In the world of radio, one way to rub against this rule is to use your radio voice. Difficult to describe in writing, but like pornography, you’ll know it when you find it. The announcer is almost monotonically stentorian. Too damn smiley (aka puking). Too instantly familiar, like a stranger on a street corner who gets your attention saying, “Broham! How you doing?!?!” Or too much all of the above all at the same time. (In a job long ago we called a fellow with this condition Mr. Rugburn, and the name fit like a custom toupee.)

Broham Rugburn, about to use his radio voice ….

Another way to break the rule is to tell yourself everything you say is worth hearing (it isn’t), and all your insights must be shared (nope). Somehow some pilots of the airwaves miss the fact that radio is as much about listening as anything else. Shut your mouth and open your heart. Or more colloquially:

Don’t be an asshole.

In this way, we come to the secret of the secret: it is also the way to living a quality life. Use the rule in any profession, and in the slice of time that exists outside work hours. Repeat as necessary. Like a mantra.

So powerful, the rule can even guide an effort like this one. At this writing, it’s the last quarter of 2021. It’s been a long pandemic, and it isn’t over yet. There is so much work to be done to make things more right in this world, and I make no assumptions that whatever I do can amount to much against all that. But let me put this down as I begin here again:

Don’t be an asshole.

A Colorado postcard

Picture a postcard: flies through the mail, fits in the hand, puts the impression of a place into your imagination. Quirky, cheap and breezy. We’ve started a neat project at Colorado Public Radio making postcards for the airwaves, the brainchild of a newcomer (with the marvelous name of Coldsnow) and an expat (me).

Here’s a subject I’ve wanted to tackle in some form for a while: Colorado is no square or rectangle, and not because of the curvature of the earth. Have a listen:

On the shape of a state with more than four corners

The Year That Was

Sometime last spring I took a picture that’s stayed with me all year. I didn’t mean to, but somehow the frame captured the mood of the last light of day without really getting the light itself. There’s a brightness, yes, but it’s tinged with awareness that the light is fading. The golden hour.

With a similar but reversed kind of layered vision, I’m looking back at 2020. An extraordinarily hard year. Deadly for way too many innocent people. But every day was a gift.

Here is a very small token of my gratitude. Please enjoy.