Epistemic Ingemination

Here’s Jonathan Jackson’s time-lapse of the Pearl Jam taping at ACL. I was the stage manager on that one; that’s me in the black shirt and long light blue jeans.

I miss doing big road work sometimes…

Pearl Jam / Austin City Limits TV Taping / Time Lapse from Jonathan Jackson on Vimeo.

Truer words never spoken.

[Addendum, after a couple of emails]

Yes, I still want to be Keith Emerson.

Missed it. Yesterday was Greg Lake’s birthday.

Baby played me Lucky Man on the radio; I’ll just have to refer you to this. In any case; Happy Birthday. Changed my world, This English Man, he did.

This kind of thing is what makes it all worthwhile in my little world.

I’m voting against 1 and 2 and for everything else, F.W.I.W…

Chronicle’s explanations and endorsements are here.

I think that I’ll just let my partner-in-the-dance Eddie Wilson take the helm today… he says it better than I can hope to.

It took all day Thursday for Wednesday night sink in. Earl Poole Ball’s musical talent, combined with his years of experience at the helm of modern American music is turning the rekindling of “Sittin’, Singin’ and Supper” into pure magic.

Old friends and new joined in the round robin of picking and harmonizing and they played like Threadgill’s Old Number One was Carnegie Hall.

Chojo Jacques is back in Austin after three decades and came by to visit Randy. Thirty-five years haven’t done Chojo any visible damage. I recognized him before we could shake hands. His fiddle playing is about as good as it gets. He recently released a CD with Billy Bright and has been touring with Slaid Cleaves.

Stonehoney and Josh Zee of the Mother Truckers made newcomers to the Hump Day Supper Session wonder if they’d waked up in Heaven. When they sang perfect four-part harmony on a version of “She,” Gram Parson’s love note to Emmylou, it was especially poignant given that Earl was the piano player on the original recording with Gram.

Barbara K and Rich Bowden performed a couple of beauties including the gorgeous Blaze Foley classic, “If I Could Only Fly” with Threadgill’s own beautiful veteran manager, Melanie Bounds.

The audience was filled with the kind of people that keep me from ever staying away for more than a heartbeat; Stan Alexander, who hooked me on music at Threadgill’s in 1961, promised to bring his guitar this Wednesday; Ann Seaman, working on a film follow up to her huge biography of Madelyn Murray O’Hare; Dorothy Martin, sister of pal Don Hyde, one of the most important and overlooked figures in the development of Austin’s counterculture; too many more to mention now because I have puppy duty in the park and it is a glorious day. Hallelujah and I hope to see you on Wednesday evening and any time between now and then that you happen upon a hunger.

P.S. Stonehoney said they are putting together a Gospel Brunch set and I let them promise to the heavens that they intend to show up and play. I didn’t break it to them that Brunch is before noon on the morning that immediately follows Saturday night. We’ll see.

Chojo will be there on Sunday morning (11-1) as well; it’s going to be extraordinary. We’ll be doing the Wednesdays for a long, long time, 7-9 PM. Add ‘em to your weekly sanity maintenance routine. It’s pure, real Austin music wonderfulness.

I have a bean! I might get two!

So, it’s the summer of 1970; I am newly 12 years old, at my uncle’s house in Dallas with Not A Lot To Do; it was a great vacation. One afternoon, I go and poke around my college-freshman cousin’s record collection. He was off at South Padre with his custom dune buggy. Or something similar.

Anyway, I came across an album with a very disturbing cover. Cool. I put it on. Listened to both sides. Listened to both sides again. And a third time.

You have to understand that the #1 song in the country was “Close To You” by The Carpenters at that time; it was what I knew. This thing kicked me in the side of the head like a mule, and changed the game forever.

Saturday, Oct. 10th, 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the release of the album entitled “In the Court of the Crimson King (an observation by King Crimson).” I still have it on vinyl, and in great shape. One of my few material possessions that I’ve taken care of over the years.

Enjoy.

King Crimson – In The Court Of The Crimson King

Let’s see. What have I been doing, besides Not Posting To My Blog?

Lots of stuff. Most importantly, I have been pulling away from political concerns. (Finally!) The level of political discourse in this society has reached a point where even a self-aware ten-year-old can see the lies. I’ll have none of it for the time being. It’s as if the most pressing, serious problems in this country are being debated by blind deranged monkeys playing whack-a-mole. I’m not strong enough to wade into that level of effluvia every day, and I am a better man for it. I’ve even signed off of the most intelligent mail list with which I’ve ever been associated. I just can’t do it for now.

Music stuff has been going great. This year I’ve worked with M.Ward, St. Vincent, James Polk, Hayes Carll, James McMurtry, the Dave Matthews Band, the Southwest Regional Folk Alliance, XM Radio, Jimmy LaFave, Kerrville, Iron & Wine, the Folk Alliance, Pearl Jam & Barbara K. Many others. I am a very, very lucky guy to have the privilege. I love to enable genius; it’s what I do best. They all seem to like me okay, too. Maybe I’ll be a success at this stuff someday.

Home stuff is cool, for the most part. We’re finding our feet en re education. I don’t want to invade my son’s personal space too much; let’s just say that we’re engaging in an applied philosophical experiment that I’ve talked about before. Even if we fail, he ultimately wins.

I can recommend without reservation a “cookbook” called Ratio, by Micheal Ruhlman. It is the most remarkable foodie book that I’ve ever encountered, and it is quickly becoming as essential in the kitchen as a knife to me.

My buddy Gunnar is in town, and he brought lobsters, which we ate with relish (the adverb, not the noun) last week. Clarified butter, smoked-sea-salted asparagus and dill-bacon baby potatoes accompanied. A lobster stock was forthwith contrived, which, a few days later, turned into the best seafood gumbo that’s ever magically appeared in my kitchen. The Foodie Gods have smiled upon us this week.

My girlfriend is the most kind and tolerant person you’ve ever seen, even in the face of gawdawful Male Stupidity, and she has the prettiest eyes in the history of the human race.

That’s all for now.

Keith Olbermann clears things up nicely. A really remarkable video:

Go to youtube.com and type in the search term “bloopers”.

Ignore the first twenty or so. The coolness is further in. Have fun.

A sort of an odd way to spend a Saturday morning, but if you like beef and have a closet desire to learn more about butchery and the various standard cuts of meat, check out the University of Nebraska Bovine Myology site.

The 3d slices are cool. So are the cut descriptions.

It’s making me hungry; I’m thinking a nice 2″ thick cross section cut of Psoas major, bacon-wrapped, hardwood seared and served rare with a pat of garlic butter on top…

A very concise, good read on why we need single-payer health insurance.

Excerpt:

Currently, health care is treated as a privilege for the wealthy, those employed by the state or a large business, and for those over 65. Leaving everyone else uninsured is not just morally wrong, it is economically wrong. Over half of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills, and many of those bankrupted had insurance, but were underinsured with large deductibles or limited benefits.

I’m here to tell you that the above is a true statement.

Sen. Olympia Snowe:

“If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market … the public option will have significant price advantages”

This is the Republican argument against health care reform?

Elizabeth Gilbert (who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, a really wonderful book my sweetie loaned to me) gave a TED talk earlier this year.

She gives a very comforting and illuminating review of the creative process, and how we approach it. If you have a spare twenty minutes, it’s a thought-opener for sure. Here ’tis:

Here is a separate link to it: http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

You should watch him in action.

Really.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.

Ahh. The first week of summer.

From Popcorn.

Roger Ebert does a fine public service.

Read it all, watch the videos, follow the links. Be better.

Not to go all Youtube on you this week; I’ll back off.

But Stevie changing the Grammys (and the world) in ‘75 is the real thing. Look at all of the White Peoples clapping, while they get the mirror held up to ‘em. In time. With the Colored Help. For perhaps the first time ever.

Introduced by Andy Williams, of all people.

Magnificent.

This is muy great, approaching genius.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Laurel and Hardy. Backed up by the Gap Band.

On a mail list I belong to, we’ve been discussing a good article at the Atlantic entitled The Deficit Blame Game. It’s a scary one, and I recommend it. But I disagree strongly that it doesn’t matter who you blame. I think that it matters a great deal, and here is what I wrote in that vein.

I’m not bothered by the blame game, and feel no compulsion to appear to be even-handed in this argument. We are where we are because of Republican politics and policies. Period.

Pause and think big-picture for a moment. If the Democratic party had been in power for the last eight years, we would *not* be in this condition. Let’s put this another way: if the Republican party had not been in power for the last eight years, we would *not* be in this condition.

Two things to keep in mind: five trillion dollars of public money were effectively transferred into private hands over the last eight years. You’ve just witnessed the largest raid on a public treasury and the largest money laundering operation in history. I know that this sounds like wild-eyed conspiracy-theory hyperbole, but it’s a rationally and factually defensible statement. Follow the money and look at who benefited. Now compare that list to the donor list of the RNC.

The second point to keep in mind is that the current deficits are virtually mandated upon the current administration, due once again to the effects of previous policies of the Republican party. Virtually every credentialed economist on the planet has advised that immediate and massive deficit spending is the only way to avoid an unprecedented global economic catastrophe. There are, of course, policy questions of where and how to do this spending that are completely fair game for disagreement (and I personally disagree with much of what’s been done so far) but we really have no choice in doing it, according to the experts.

These massive deficits and accumulated debt, when combined, are truly dangerous. I think that the correct people understand this, and happily, much of the money is being pointed at infrastructure, health care, and energy efficiency upgrades that will have basic economic benefits to all, and will assist in enabling us to dig our way out in the future. One hopes. We have to start making things again, and we’ll have to live well within our means for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, if the rest of the world stops buying our bonds, then the grand experiment is over. Kaput. Gone. And that could happen this afternoon. (One trillion dollar banknotes to buy a loaf of bread? Don’t be so sure it can’t happen….) In the end, though, I am an optimist who believes that the good guys are usually the last ones standing.

I am all for even-handedness and balance in public discourse. On the other hand, we need to learn from our mistakes, and that necessitates identifying where and how those mistakes were made.

We are where we are right now because of Republican party politics. None of this would have happened if they had not been in power. Let’s remember that.

Hey! I’m 51 years old today. I’ve now lived to reach 17 three times over. Perhaps I’ll finally get out of my adolescence on the fourth round…

Kerrville was just wonderful. I have to recommend Blame Sally again to you; they are just extraordinary. One of those bands that keep growing. (My original review of their music was here… that one still gets hit regularly, and the reason is a google search for Blame Sally. It stands and applies as written, but it is also eclipsed by the same band three years later.) Visit their site; buy their music; support them. Artists like Blame Sally are the reason that I got into this business, and the reason that I am still in this business, and that is no hyperbole.

The whole Kerrville vibe is a tonic for the soul. It’s about music. Compared to, say, an NAB or NAMM, or the old New Music Seminar or the current SXSW, it’s striking. There aren’t any rock stars; there aren’t any poseurs; nobody is handing out glossy press packs and dropping names. It’s about music, and songwriting, and craftsmanship, and above all, Art. Eddie Wilson once said that the neatest thing about the old Armadillo was that “lifestyle was considered to be an art form.” That fits nicely. It was both a gift and a privilege to be a part of last weekend.

…

So… my birthday present to myself is going to consist of looking at the stars and pondering a completed half century. I’ll let you know if I find anything out.

Be excellent to each other.

Ryan and I went down to the Farmer’s Market at the Triangle yesterday, and bought a couple of one-pound organic grass fed ribeyes, just because. I grilled ‘em over pecan and mesquite w/ corn on the cob, and made some green beans alongside, also from the market. I’m still in afterglow; that steak was one of the three or four best I’ve ever eaten. Yum.

So, I’m off the Kerrville this weekend to do some audio work. If you have XM radio, I’ll be mixing live broadcasts on channel 15 — “The Village” — from 7:00 PM to midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The lineup will be superb; one of my favorites, a band called “Blame Sally” is playing; it’ll be a pleasure to see them again. The Limeliters (!) are going to be there. Terri Hendrix, Bruce Robison, Trout Fishing in America, Ray Wylie… just a whole bunch of my favorites. I’m a very lucky guy to be able to get paid for doing this stuff. (Shh. Don’t tell them that I’d be willing to pay them for the privilege…)

Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen this week’s Chronicle yet, but I am pretty sure that they’ve published my letter to the editor on the new sound ordinance. It’s on their website, anyway. It’s just a cute li’l snarky thing; enjoy.

Finally, for some reason, a wonderful story popped into my head this morning. I searched the archives and found it on a twenty-year-old disk. I’ll leave you with that for now. See you on Monday.

The Fisherman and American Businessman

The American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied only a little while.

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time?

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You Should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Go out there and do something kind and unexpected for someone today, okay?

Physorg has a neat article about a new theory of quantum gravity. (I am certain that this excites you very much, right?) Anyway, it basically postulates that there may be quantum level black holes, and that those may in fact be what our elementary particles are made of.

The reason that I think it’s neat is because I came up with a not-incompatible idea of how the universe works about a quarter century ago. I still use it to visualize the Nature of Things. (I also doubt that it’s a unique idea; it too simple not to have been thought of long ago. But I’ve never run across anything quite like it ’til this morning.)

To really simplify, my idea said that spacetime is actually 5 dimensions, one of time, four of space, and that everything that we can see (and much that we cannot) is simply disturbance in that spacetime. Energy would be kind of like ripples on the surface of a pond; matter would be analogous to whirlpools in the pond, and what we see as the laws of physics are complex mode resonances and cancellations between all of ‘em. (For you physics geeks, it’s not same as the old luminiferous aether thing; in my old visualization, the spacetime is the whole shebang. Energy and matter would be, respectively, 3-D linear and 4-D angular/rotational density disturbances in spacetime.)

Ahh, good times. It would be cool if I used to be on the right track, I suppose. Heh.

You’re looking at the new installation; just did the nameservice switch, and it’s propagating ‘cross the net as I write this. I lost a couple of posts due to database backup schedules at the old provider, but that’s nothing to worry about.

More changes here coming soon. Since this is the default www.kirchhof.com page now, I’ll move the old /randy page info up to this. Stuff like that. I am also going to be mucking around with the configuration so that other folks in the family can have their own websites; for example, Ryan wants a blog; that’ll be at ryan.kirchhof.com pretty soon.

Finally, if one of you regulars wants to check and see if comments are working, I’d appreciate it.

They say that things come in threes, but… man.

This week we lost Poodie Locke. We lost Bud Shrake. And we lost Stephen Bruton. Three giants, and all of them genuinely kind human beings. Every one of them by now has been pulled to the head of the line and issued an all-access pass by St. Pete, guaranteed.

If there’s a rock ‘n’ roll heaven, well, that band just added one of the best guitar players that this planet ever produced — and they now have a helluva road manager, too.

And you can be sure that Bud & Ann Richards are sitting at the front table, drinking beer, doing shots of liquor and welcoming everyone who passes by with smiles and open arms.

This just… feels like a much smaller world today.

Went into Walgreen’s again tonight. They were playing “Carry On” by CSN&Y on the store muzac.

I’m now officially “Old.” I’m in the frickin’ Walgreen’s demographic.

I think that Linda Sanchez is a Maroon, and I don’t like her politics.

(That’s neither Severe nor is it Repeated. But it is Hostile.)

I think that Linda Sanchez is a Maroon, and I don’t like her politics.

(That’s Hostile and Repeated.)

I think that she should be spanked.

(That’s Severe.)

I should now be fined big amounts or imprisoned not more than two years, or both, assuming that this is something that we want on the books. Heck, let’s prosecute me under Title 18, Chapter 41.875 USC while we’re at it. I could get life.

Sheesh. Where are we, fellow humans? Will you kindly make some noise about this stuff?

Original link is here.