My first time in Las Vegas was in 2007 I believe, on a Weightless tour that featured Dj Raregroove, Envelope, and myself. We played in a hookah lounge. It was packed at the time it needed to be packed but for whatever reason there ended up being like 3-4 more opening acts added to the show last minute that kept pushing my stage time back later, and later, and later. By the time I ended up going on it had to be around 2am, and the majority of my fans and the crowd had given up and left, probably believing that I wasn’t even going to play. It was so bad that there were people in there literally asleep at tables waiting for me to go on.

For those that stayed it ended up being and pretty good show. For those that left, it was perfectly understandable. I probably would’ve done the same thing, and it wasn’t even a weekend, so people had to work the next day. That night was a big lesson for me. Prior to that, I had never had to pay much attention to whether the show itself would be managed properly, and because I didn’t my fans paid the price for it. I’ve always wanted to make up for that show.

I was in Santa Cruz yesterday surveying the area before our show and came across a book store a couple doors down.  Since I stopped drinking my appetite for reading has increased dramatically, and I’m starting to read a book a week on average.  I walked into this bookstore and felt kind of overwhelmed because there was so much I wanted to read.  If I would’ve had more money to spend and more space to carry books on tour I would’ve gotten more, but I ended up settling on a book called “Zen in the Martial Arts” by Joe Hyams.  The very first section had a quote in it that stood out to me, and I wanted to share.  It’s a quote from one of the authors teachers Ed Parker:

“I am not going to show you my art.  I am going to share it with you.  If i show it to you it becomes an exhibition, and in time it will be pushed so far into the back of your mind that it will be lost.  But by sharing it with you, you will not only retain it forever, but I, too, will improve” – Ed Parker

The book only cost me $1 but as far as I’m concerned that quote is priceless.

Word is Blog

Me, Ant, and Slug were on our way to get some food when we saw this dog was sitting outside a coffee shop in Missoula Montana.  I usually walk around the city and take pics but i wasn’t too happy with any of the pictures I took, plus this one is much better.

This was my 5th or 6th time in Missoula since 2002 and by far it was the weirdest.  Usually Missoula crowds are really fun, and I’ve never had a bad time there.  This time around there was just something weird in the air.

FUDGING REALITY

How big a step is it from manipulating the people and events in a reality TV series–to make the show more interesting–to manipulating the people and events in a documentary for the same reason?  Unfortunately, history teaches us that the path to corruption often starts as an apparent shortcut, a little bit easier way to reach your goal.  But it’s a slippery slope, perhaps shallow at first but gradually growing steeper.  Once on it’s hard to get off. And once caught, it’s hard ever to be trusted again.

In any documentary of events as they occur, the temptation is always there to nudge things in a preferred direction.  But the moment that happens, you are no longer documenting a unique event with the outcome unknown.  You’re influencing the outcome.  And what might be learned from the film has been tainted. It can no longer be considered valid.” – Barry Hampe “Making Documentary Films and Videos”

Thoughts?

First of all, I want to thank everybody for the positive feedback on the music video for “Dream Big”.  I realized I didn’t really write a lot of notes in the youtube description area; mostly because I’m not sure if people ever read those notes, but also because I was afraid of it being too long, so I went back and did some:

It was directed, shot, and edited Daniel Gillespie of Purple Films.  He is a young director from Cleveland, OH.  I actually met him via myspace a couple years back.  We had plans to shoot a completely different video that was for a song from my full-length album Adventures in Counter-Culture, but it was an outdoor shoot involving a lot of kids, and we ran out of good weather and time.  Also, as my album started to change and the final version was being made, it became clear that the song we had originally planned on shooting a video for probably wasn’t going to make the album.

“Pain” from Blueprint Who EP

I don’t let the drums dictate the way what I spit lay
or if the rhythm of it’s what makes it great
I listen to it, then when I hit play
my mind drift into a place 50 years away
I see what would’ve been if i let the pen lay
the Old Me got so many things to say
But nobody listens cause his beard is gray
So he tells me to get back here and seize the day
See, I don’t need peace and quiet
I really don’t like it, it really aint the way
Cool concept,
but hardly inspiring when peace is the only thing you see every day
Now I don’t think we need riots
or all types of violence for things to be ok
But in terms of environment, we need something to fight against
cause most great art can’t exist without pain

Sometimes you gotta persevere through all the chaos around you.

Last week I was driving from Cincy back to Columbus from tour rehearsals and caught a flat tire on the freeway.  Pulled over and trooped it to a tire spot.  It ended up costing me about 2 hours and $75 bucks but I made it, and didn’t let it get me down.  I thought about how in the past i always feared that shit happening, but when it actually did happen i was really relaxed.

On Monday morning around 8am, I was headed to Cincy, again for rehearsals when my entire exhaust pipe fell off the fucking car.  Shit was wild. 

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – Herbert Simon

Thoughts?