Plainly and simply… I will miss the island.

Okay, its bad when you wake up in the morning and realize you spent all night dreaming about recording and engineering a musical project. I miss my friends, I dream about them. I miss my cat, I dream about him. I miss… my studio? Okay, now that’s going too far.

Seriously. They’re all quitting on me. I present for your perusal a shopping list of failed technology since I came to this island:

• Cell phone charger - Fortunately I solved this by getting a new phone.
• New phone - Power button got stuck after 1 day of use, making the phone shut off randomly.
• MOTU Ultralite - The interface that powers my entire performance? Yeah. Same story- shutting off randomly in the middle of a concert. Nothing like dead silence in the middle of a song with a packed dance floor.
• In-ear monitors - The wireless system that lets me hear myself when I sing? The $900 wireless system that keeps me from shouting my voice out? Yeah. Not working now.
• Earbuds - The $150 Shure earbuds I use for my monitors during performances? The right ear stopped working.
• Replacement earbuds - The $150 Shure earbuds I bought to replace them? The left ear stopped working a week after I bought them. And Sweetwater sent their replacement to my home in Boston. Thanks.
• The Myxcercycle - Somehow the controller unit shorted out, hopefully the new one will arrive today. In the mean time I’ve been pedaling a 55-pound bike with magnetic resistance on the front wheel.
• And now, MagSafe - The power brick for my MacBook came apart. I get to spend the next week borrowing power cables whenever possible and running off of battery a lot.
  Update: AppleCare is fooking amazing, btw. They’re overnighting me a new one for free. It’s an 18-month-old power brick and they’re just replacing it.

Someone please wake me when the rebellion is over. I just want my robots to behave again.

The sun is setting earlier every day out here. It reminds me of how short my remaining time is on this island. Most of me wants to get on the next ferry out of here, but part of me knows I’m going to miss it. Just like I did last year.

And just like last year, I want to get home and start work on my next big project. I’m planning on something big, new, exciting, and potentially dangerous. Something that could either save independent musicians like myself or drive me straight into a boring day job.

With your help, I’ll stay afloat, even after I get off that giant boat onto the mainland. I’ll be a lot more specific in September, but for now all I can think of is a clock counting down to the end of my exile here on Block Island.

For the record: I wasn’t there, I’m running on the video footage.

Have you ever heard of Richard Cheese? He’s the guy who takes hard rock tunes like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Down With The Sickness” and turns them into cheesy lounge numbers. It’s his shtick, and he’s made a career out of it. Sort of like Weird Al with no creativity.

It’s like he adds a touch of class to dirty, grungy rock music.

Apparently Cheese proved how completely devoid of class he is at the recent New Media Expo in Vegas. To quote some attendees:

When Richard Cheese started his performance he started complaining about the Audio levels, and from what I heard later he had demanded from the organizer that all other prior performers audio levels be at a lower level then his.
Todd Cochrane, Geek News Central
[Video from the event can be found at this link, assuming Cheese hasn't sued him yet.]
[Too late... you'll have to find video on your own, it seems.]

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s dancing, singing, idiots on mopeds, deer, and some killer waves.