Dryden Is Home

Listen Live: WVBR.com: Fresh Roots Radio

Tonight Arjan and I were invited to a party to celebrate a new bathroom. We stayed home. The party is about 30 minutes away in nice weather. This afternoon, around 1pm, the snow started to fall in Ithaca, Dryden, and Freeville. My normal 10 minute drive from my office (where I was working for about 4 hours today, in Ithaca) to the house (in Dryden) took about 25 minutes. I figured it would be safer for both Arjan and me to stay in this evening.

We spent a couple hours watching episodes of Season 4 of the West Wing. Now we are kicking back and winding down from a busy day and tv time. Arjan is working on a cross word puzzle from the Ithaca Journal and I'm working on one from the NY Times (I'm also blogging, of course).

We are also both listening to Fresh Roots Radio on WVBR (online at wvbr.com). Our friend David Gould (DJ Solid Gould) hosts a reggae show every Saturday night from 10pm to midnight.

Tune in every Saturday:

http://www.myspace.com/freshrootsradio

or here:

http://wvbr.com/listen

"Support the good music around here!" -DJ Solid Gould

Arjan and me at GrassRoots 2008

Arjan and me at GrassRoots 2008
Originally uploaded by dmakar

Arjan and I spent most of the afternoon and evening for the last four days (Thursday to Sunday) at Grassroots Festival 2008 in Trumansburg, New York. The festival included local music acts, regional acts, and guest from as far away as Brazil and Mali.

I found the festival to be akin to a large four day cocktail party with some live music. It wasn't that the festival was about drinking - - there isn't a drop of alcohol sold at the festival - - it was that the atmosphere was of just dropping in, chatting, and moving on.

There's no agenda, just lots of conversations ranging from alternative energy to music production to art marketing to comprehensive plans to team boating to relationships to child raising plans.

There was also some rain, a bit of mud, a lot of dancing, and some of the best live music I've ever seen. Featured performers I enjoyed (that have names I remember on Monday):
Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Cyro Baptista & Beat the Donkey
The Meditations
Galumpha
Sim Redmond Band
John Brown’s Body
Luminescent Orchestrii
Johnny Dowd
MC Lars
Samite of Uganda
Jennie Stearns
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad
Hank Roberts
Thousands of One
The Talktomes
Evil City Stringband
Gunpoets
Hubcap
Mary Lorson & Billy Cote
Burke & Bone

My complete collection of photos (4 days = 4 sets):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/collections/72157606293422310/

GrassRoots site:
http://www.grassrootsfest.org

Alash at ABC Cafe

Alash at ABC Cafe
Originally uploaded by dmakar.

My cell phone's tiny crappy camera works!

Last night Arjan and I had dessert (Toffee Bar for me, Chocolate Pie for her) and a drink (coffee for me, red wine for her) at the ABC Cafe. We finished up our dessert just a few minutes before Alash performed.

Alash is a throat singing band from Tuva, a republic in the southern reaches of Russian Siberia. It had been mongolian or russian or both. There's a bit of a history on Wikipedia. Throat singing is a method of singing where the singer controls the air from the lungs to the mouth and lips using the throat like an instrument - mostly sounding like a flute. At the same time the singer is singing or humming through the throat . There's a Wikipedia article on overtone singing which is the same thing.

There's a lot of magical harmony and the four performers worked well together making it sound as though there were 8 or 12 people performing.

My friend Steve from Small World Music (and Ithaca Blog) described Tuva as a place where the people are mostly cowboys. These cowboys raise and oversee horses and yaks. When they bed down at camp for the night they sing. They've done this for generations and it is a style learned from a young age. Steve mentioned a movie called "Genghis Blues" about an aging blues singer from San Francisco who stumbles onto Tuvan music and goes to Tuva to learn and sing, "The Story of a Blind Blues Musician's Journey To The Lost Land of Tuva".

I'm sure the Tuvans don't think they are lost. It was amazing to see them sing and to think that they came from so very far away and from a time that was all but forgotten. If noone would have visited Tuva their tradition would have stayed hidden forever perhaps. We are lucky here in Tompkins County to be able to have such visitors in our towns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuva
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_singing
http://www.alashensemble.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alash_Ensemble
http://ithaca-blog.blogspot.com
http://www.genghisblues.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loxosceles/460332345/

Music Videos and Answers

Gary, from Etna, asks "Who were those bands from last week's photos? Did anyone guess them correctly?"

The answer is - no one guessed them at all! Go figure. Here's the original post if you want to guess: http://ithacaishome.typepad.com/ithaca_is_home/2006/12/what_im_listeni.html

Answers in the form of video:

1.

2.

3.

4. No video for these guys, just a link to their site

Picture 1, Addison Groove Project, Answer Number 4

Picture 2, Zero 7, Video Number 1

Picture 3, StereoLab, Video Number 3

Picture 4, Air, Video Number 2

That should settle that!

What I'm Listening To

Gary, over at "Potter's Blog" does a great job of telling you what he's listening to and finding a music video almost everyday. I'm not planning on going in that direction, but I did want to review some of the music I've been listening to lately. I'll make this a little contest. Can you guess who these four bands are? Can you guess all four?

1.

2.

3.

4.

I got up really early today and saw two frequent readers of the blog. It was good to get home and have the whole day ahead of me. I read a lot of Steve Pavlina's blog this weekend and I like his ideas about getting up earlier. The best fact (especially for someone working from home) - if you get up an hour earlier everyday - or just get out of bed when you plan to instead of snoozing for an hour - you will gain 365 hours a year. That equals 9 work weeks! Imagine if you could get work done in half of those mornings - that would be an additional 4.5 weeks of work each year. I'm going to do my best to get up at a more reasonable time and get to my office just an hour earlier each day.

From Steve's blog:

Think about what you could do with that extra time. Even an extra 30 minutes per day is enough to exercise daily, read a book or two each month, maintain a blog, meditate daily, cook healthy food, learn a musical instrument, etc. A small amount of extra time each day adds up to significant amounts over the course of a year. 30 minutes a day is 182.5 hours in a year. That’s more than a month of working full-time (40 hours per week). Double it if you save 60 minutes a day, and triple it if you save 90 minutes a day. For me the savings was about 90 minutes/day. That’s like getting a free bonus year every decade. I’m using this time to do things that I previously didn’t have the time and energy to do. It’s wonderful.

Here's a few of Steve's posts I read this weekend:

How to Become an Early Riser

How to Become an Early Riser - Part 2

How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off

Steely Dan: Surprise Concert

Steely Dan: Dave and Phil
Originally uploaded by dmakar.

When your best friend calls from Maine at 6 o'clock on Saturday telling you he has tickets to see Steely Dan you get in your car and drive. Well, the concert wasn't until Sunday night so...

You finish off the social engagement you are attending, go home, sleep and then get up and drive.

Sunday night Phil and I saw Steely Dan at Mansfield, Massachusetts' Tweeter Center. Monday I drove home to Dryden. It made for a great weekend.

The show was incredible! We stood in the rain the entire three hour show and it took quite a while to dry off and feel warm again. I took a bunch of pictures, but haven't found the set list just yet. I'm sure its around the internet somewhere. Take a look at the whole set of pictures.

Three Years...Don't Lose That Number

Three years ago tonight I drove up to Manch-vegas with A. to see Steely Dan. This was the first time I ever saw them perform and it was something I had been looking forward to since I started listening to "The Dan" in the summer of 1996.

Now it is three years later and instead of driving from Berlin to Manchester I am going to drive from Dryden to Ithaca to see some live music. Instead of seeing Walter and Donald I'll be seeing and listening to the music of J-san and the Analogue Sons (old school soul with reggae and hip hop).

The entire photo essay of August 19th, 2003 Steely Dan show is here: http://544online.com/dmakar/Events/2003/August/SteelyDan/

Timing

So I'm playing some Outkast on the Rhapsody music player and "Da Art Of Storytellin' (Part 1) " comes on (song 9 from Aquemini) and as the song is winding down the Wednesday thunder rolls into town. Check it out and imagine your office is 85 degrees and the windows are open and the thunder is rolling.

(Btw, the album is listed as explicit, but what are you gonna do?)