I have as many recordings that are not up on this site yet as there are already here. Maybe. Combined, how many hours of consecutive playback might that give us? 48 hours of recorded music? All the thousands of hours invested in this practice only come to a couple of days of listening back. Could that be right? Have I really recorded so very little?
BROAD RUINS: Occasional self-indulgent ramblings
The Meaning of Value or The Value of Meaning
"Thinking is not necessarily a good idea" a good friend of mine once suggested while gaining insight from some magic mushrooms. But I'll take it another step: why do anything? Why muddy up the waters of the moment with reactions? Why extract validation from some arbitrary external source in order to determine the worth of a thing? What does anything mean? What does anything matter?
That being asked, the answer might be that nothing does, in fact, matter at all. So why bother? I guess because not bothering is actually worse. Nihilism is worse than hope. And hope is a form of madness. The choices are really about entertainment on a personal level, then. So why not embrace the absurd?
That being asked, the answer might be that nothing does, in fact, matter at all. So why bother? I guess because not bothering is actually worse. Nihilism is worse than hope. And hope is a form of madness. The choices are really about entertainment on a personal level, then. So why not embrace the absurd?
More on Barry Schmaltz
With over 70 episodes of Many Worlds of Music already recorded and more than 30 episodes of the show that will follow Many Worlds also in the can, as they say, I can report with some confidence that 2012 will be a very Schmaltz-heavy year. Follow the show on YouTube; Season Two will start in January, with new episodes at least twice a week.
On Barry Schmaltz
The show, "Many Worlds of Music" with Barry Schmaltz, is now a reality. I've spent the last three weeks or so on this project, and have explored the character of Barry Schmaltz more thoroughly than I ever wanted to. The thing is, he has such a strong personality that he kind of overwhelms me when he makes his points. This might be why I stayed in music rather than pursuing acting: it's so totally consuming, the acting thing. I've always wanted to write for television, and with this crazy internet thing, here, now I can! See? He's still with me. Actually, I learned a lot about him. He's a very progressive thinker in some ways, with his ideas on economic reform and his take on civilized society. His taste in music turns out to be much better than expected once we get into his selections from artists in our own universe. And his quest for self-knowledge is surprisingly central to his character. Anyway, the show is done for the time being. There will be four seasons, with each season running for the duration of an actual season, like winter and spring and so forth, weekly. Twice a week as we get into summer. To paraphrase Miss Jean Brodie, if you like this sort of thing, then this will be the sort of thing you like.
Icon
Actually, Barry Schmaltz is a lot more than just my boorish alter ego. He is the key player in my quest to unify my entire catalog with a common contextual thread, namely, music from other worlds. Not like Venus or Mars, as he says, but other versions of Earth, with different histories and different songs. And one might imagine that the songs from other worlds might be of the same caliber of music that hit songs from our universe are. Maybe so. We'll never know, because Barry Schmaltz, this world's one and only multiversal disc jockey/promoter, has terrible taste in music. The artists he finds for us to listen to may be popular in a world next door, but they're just awful over here. Nevertheless, if every song that could ever be recorded has already been recorded somewhere, it stands to reason that if a song exists, it might be popular somewhere, because in a seemingly infinite number of universes, some of those worlds would have popularized some of those songs. Very many, perhaps. Furthermore, why not postulate that some of the songs I have created here also exist Somewhere Else? And that they're popular over there?
I also conceived of a vast conspiracy wherein XM Radio was involved in bringing exact duplicates of hit songs we have here over from other worlds where the songs sound exactly the same, but since the artists are different, no royalties are paid. If you have two groups, one named, say, The Beatles, and another named The Brittles, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just play Brittles tunes and not pay anyone? But how is that possible?, you might ask. Well, if Barry Schmaltz has a multiversal radio receiver, he could hear all the tunes from all the other worlds and record the ones he likes and bring them to us. I enjoy imagining that he does exactly that. And if a seemingly infinite number of possible variations of reality can be imagined, it can just as easily be imagined that in some universe, perhaps one quite close to this one, a version of Barry Schmaltz is actually already doing this sort of thing. Which means that my music may end up being wildly popular in some other universe.
That is my vision. I have created Barry Schmaltz and enlisted his help in the hope that he will make me a multiversal musical icon.
I also conceived of a vast conspiracy wherein XM Radio was involved in bringing exact duplicates of hit songs we have here over from other worlds where the songs sound exactly the same, but since the artists are different, no royalties are paid. If you have two groups, one named, say, The Beatles, and another named The Brittles, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just play Brittles tunes and not pay anyone? But how is that possible?, you might ask. Well, if Barry Schmaltz has a multiversal radio receiver, he could hear all the tunes from all the other worlds and record the ones he likes and bring them to us. I enjoy imagining that he does exactly that. And if a seemingly infinite number of possible variations of reality can be imagined, it can just as easily be imagined that in some universe, perhaps one quite close to this one, a version of Barry Schmaltz is actually already doing this sort of thing. Which means that my music may end up being wildly popular in some other universe.
That is my vision. I have created Barry Schmaltz and enlisted his help in the hope that he will make me a multiversal musical icon.
Kimchi
Kimchi (or kim chee) is, as Wikipedia informs us, a traditional fermented Korean dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings. There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi made with a main vegetable ingredient such as napa cabbage, radish, green onions, or cucumber. It is the most common side dish in Korean cuisine. I only include it in this song because singing about it amused me in the context of The Cat Food Song. Before, I was taking crunchies and putting them in a bowl; now it's kimchi. Perhaps the bowl itself is the metaphor. Or the allusion. Anyway, my booking agent for these types of gigs is a gentleman named Tony Kim. He is, one could say, very enthusiastic about his role in these affairs. So, to honor him specifically and Korea in general and this whole type of wedding scene in particular, I decided to write this song and make the video. (Go to the new YouTube Videos page to check it out.) Unfortunately, I could not obtain a photograph of the Tony Kim I actually know. To make up for that, I've included about 40 pictures of other Tony Kims that I do not know. Maybe it's just funny to me. We'll find out soon enough.
Amber
What a marvelous keeper of feelings music can be! I have been listening closely for some days now to my 1987 page, and it's been fascinating to experience, like a snapshot frozen in time (or maybe more like a hologram, with all those rich layers of association - didn't I have a holographic eye pin once? -), all the positive emotions these tracks can evoke. And it's true of other eras I revisit. Even if some of the performances are dreadful, the underlying energy is still there, preserved as if in amber. That's not an inappropriate metaphor, when you consider the color of recording tape.
...Paola?
Wow! Thank you for commenting; I am amazed and delighted to discover you're still out there! If you send me a quick e-mail - if you want to, that is - I would be very happy for the opportunity to write to you in more detail. At any rate, in any form, I'm thrilled to have heard from you after all these years.
Mattituck
Today I play one of my oldest Dennis Bram legacy gigs - the annual affair at Judge William Thompson's summer house on the North Fork of Long Island. I think I've been playing this one for almost 20 years; I've actually lost count. The personnel is different each year because it's a very long drive. But this year I have John Romagnoli and guitarist Lou Volpe on the date, so that's just fine.
I never seem to discuss my live work on this website, updates about gigs and such. Much of my work is for private affairs like this one, so I never bother mentioning it. But this time I'll bring it up, as I wonder if each year will be the last. I still wonder.
I never seem to discuss my live work on this website, updates about gigs and such. Much of my work is for private affairs like this one, so I never bother mentioning it. But this time I'll bring it up, as I wonder if each year will be the last. I still wonder.
Self-indulgence
Perhaps I should refrain from personal asides. I only make this observation as a personal aside. Also, I hoped to stimulate dialogue; so far, that seems fruitless. Probably vain and self-destructive, to boot. But still...