I read this joke on a forum that I frequent:

Team owner Jeffery Lurie had put together the perfect team for the Philadelphia Eagles. The only thing missing was a good quarterback. He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European Leagues, but he couldn’t find a ringer who could ensure a Super Bowl victory. One night while watching CNN, he saw a war-zone scene in Afghanistan In one corner of the background, he spotted a young Afghani soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand-grenade straight into a window from 80 yards away. Then he threw another, from 50 yards, down a chimney, and finally hit a passing car going 80 miles per hour.

“I’ve got to get this guy!” Lurie said to himself. “He has the perfect arm!”

He brings the young Afghan to the States and teaches him the great game of football. Sure enough the Eagles go on to win the Super Bowl. The young Afghan is hailed as a hero of football, and when the coach asks him what he wants, all the young man wants to do is call his mother.

“Mom,” he says into the phone, “I just won the Super Bowl.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” the old Muslim woman says. “You deserted us. You are not my son.”

“Mother, I don’t think you understand,” pleads the son, “I’ve just won the greatest sporting event in the world!”

“No! Let me tell you,” his mother retorts, “At this very moment are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the house so she doesn’t get raped!” The old lady pauses, then tearfully says, “I will never forgive you for making us move to Philadelphia!”

Look at your address bar. My blog has moved. The new address is blog.ahdchild.com. In the past, if you went to that address, it redirected your browser to the old blogspot address. Now there’s no more blogspot address. Don’t worry, if you go to the old address you’ll still end up here.

I got to talk a good friend of mine the other day. It had been a while since we last talked, but whenever we talk, we geek out on new and old music technology and techniques. A few months ago, he’d been on a crazy quest to find out everything he could about vocoders and talkboxes, so we revisited the topics. He told m that I should head over to YouTube to check out a video of Stevie Wonder playing the talkbox. I watched the video and loved it – Stevie is amazing. When I searched for that video, the second search result was a video of Stevie doing a drum solo. I knew Stephie could play a lot of instruments, but drums? He’s not usually associated with drums, but he was amazing on drums too.

As I was watching the drum video, I was thinking, “I knew that Stevie is a musical genius, but I guess didn’t fully understand what that means.” We hear artists on Cd’s and the radio or we see them on videos, and as good as their recorded material is, we miss so much of them by not seeing them live. There are certain things that just can’t translate on record. It’s one thing to hear a recording of a good guitar solo, but it’s another thing to actually see that solo played. Back in 2004, I went out to see Ayro perform. He did amazing things with an MPC and 2 keyboards. Later on, when I listened to the recorded version of that same performance, while it was good, it did not approach the experience of what I had seen in person.

I write my music, but I lack the skill to play it live. I’m completely happy with that, but I have to respect the people that can do this stuff live. How can you not admire good, live music? It’s simply amazing.

I’m gonna ask people if the are speaking in the figurative or literal sense whenever they use common metaphors and figures of speech. Once they tell me they mean it figuratively, I’ll have a delayed reaction to whatever they said.

“That’s some dumb shit!”

“Um, when you say shit, do you literally mean that’s an unintelligent bowel movement, or did you mean that figuratively?”

“Errr…I meant it figuratively – there’s no bowel movement.”

(Completely naturally as if this is my first response to the original statement) “Ha ha, yeah that shit is dumb!”

The album that I keep talking about is done. It is available for preview and sale at cdbaby. I posted digital liner notes that include credits, lyrics and thank-you’s at AhdChild.com. The release party will be on Thursday, September 6, so if you’re in the Philly area, come out. It’s free and I’ll be performing a bunch of songs from the album.

So far, I’ve sold a few copies of the album by hand, and feedback has been very positive. I’ve tried to guess at which songs would be the “favorites.” In some cases I was right, but in other cases it’s been songs that never would have guessed. As far as subject matter goes, the album is pretty heavy, especially the last song, but according to one guy who bought it, the bonus tracks help change the mood once the main tracks are finished.

If you listen and like what you hear, please post a review at cdbaby.

Yesterday, I went to a reading by William Gibson, a well-known sci-fi author. In her speech, the lady who introduced him mentioned that Gibson is not a techy or anything like that, he learns the technical language he uses in his novels by hanging out with techies. When she said that, it hit me – writers are experience leeches. Artists are leeches. Even as she spoke, I was being a leech. I was sitting in my seat trying to figure out how I could fit Gibson’s speech into a blog entry. I constantly wander through life looking for songs. I look at my experiences and other people’s experiences. Once, a friend voiced concern that another friend was losing herself in a relationship. Now I have a half-finished song from the point of view of someone who’s realized he’s lost his individuality to his relationship. The key lines in the chorus – “All we got is we/I don’t know how that got to be/But now all we got is we.”

I am an experience leech, or even worse, an experience thief. That friend has no idea that her life was the inspiration for a song, and if she heard it, she’d have no idea it had anything to do with her. I asked no permission and gave no warning. Now that I think about it, I’ve been doing this since I first started creating. Around the time that I first started writing poems, I remember someone telling me that as a toddler she had been scared of death. It struck me as odd and interesting that a toddler would have the understanding and the forethought necessary to be able to fear death, so that became the subject of one of my earliest poems.

I guess this is my warning/disclaimer to everyone. Your life may become my art. By sharing any part of your life with me, you are implying your consent to have some part of your life experience to be featured in a song, poem, blog or other creative endeavor. Yes I know this is the sort of unfairly half-assed, obscure disclaimer that most people never read until it’s way too late, but if it works for software companies, it’ll work for me. And I’m not sorry. I’m grateful for every person, thing and event that provides inspiration, but I am not sorry for stealing your experiences and I don’t care that I don’t have permission.

The names in this story are changed. Otherwise, it is a true story.

I had a client, Dave, who recorded his whole album in my home studio. He was very happy with the quality of the recording and mixing, so after the album was done, he came back to record a song that he was working on with another artist, Robert. The whole time that Robert was in my studio, he kept making small comments, implying that because it was a home studio, the quality of the music would not be good. My studio is not flashy and when it comes to looks, it doesn’t have much in common with a professional studio, so I ignored the comments. I assumed that when Robert heard the end result, he’d realize that appearance isn’t everything. I wasn’t really feeling Robert’s condascending attitude, but other than that, the session went well. Robert had to leave before I mixed the song, so he didn’t hear the final version that day, but I mixed it and gave a copy to Dave. As usual, Dave was very happy with the result.

Fast forward several months. I ran into Robert and he told me that he finally got to hear the mixed version of the song. He loved it and was very impressed by the mixing. He said that the second version he heard was much better than the first. Second version? First? After the conversation, I realized that I didn’t remember if I had done two versions or if I’d given Dave a rough version of the song before giving him a final mix. Maybe he’d had someone else mix the song after me and the second version that Robert was praising wasn’t even the one I did! I didn’t want to take credit that didn’t belong to me, so I went to Dave and asked him if the mix Robert had heard was the one that I had done.

Dave told me that not only was it the same mix that I had done, it was identical to the “first version” that Robert said he didn’t like. Apparently, I did mix the song the same day we recorded it. Soon after that, Dave gave Robert a copy of it. Robert listened to it and told Dave to send it to him when he had it mixed in a real studio. Months later, Robert told Dave he was still waiting to get a copy of that song. Dave sent Robert the exact same file. Robert loved it.

I was told about a news story where it was claimed that on hot days we should spend some time in airconditioning because our bodies don’t get a chance to rest if they stay hot. Air conditionors are convenient, but they are hardly a necessity. We have gotten along without them for ages and many of us (me for example) still don’t own one. Well, this made me think about all the other pseudo necessities that modern technology has given us. Here’s the list in no particular order:

• Air conditioners – making sure to stay hydrated on a hot day will keep you safe from heat related health issues.
• Cell phone – I know this must not be a necessity because I didn’t have one for most of my life and I stil survived somehow. I just can’t figure out how survival was achieved without a cell phone.
• Washing machines and driers – we all either own washing machines or take our dirty clothes to places where we basically rent washing machines. Once upon a time people washed clothes by hand. I’ve heard that it still works for those who care to try.
• Cable – obviously this doesn’t apply to every, but it seems that many people consider cable to be one of the basic and necessary utilities, right up there with water, heat and electricity.
• Microwave – Similar to the cell phone, I know that there has to be someway to exist without a microwave, I just can’t figure out what it is. I’m sure it must somehow involve stoves and ovens.

There are some technologies that weren’t necessities in the past that are now because of the way that society has changed.

• Computer – Our society creates it’s own need for computers. If we, as a society, decided that we didn’t want computers anymore, we could simply turn them off, but if the rest of society is typing away, it’s hard for one individual to get by without some sort of computer and internet access.
• Car (depending on where you live) – The availability of cars has made us design societal infrastructure for cars. Things are further apart now because distance isn’t as much of an inconveniance as it used to be – as long as you have a car.
• Credit/Debit Card – It’s not safe to keep a bunch of cash around, it’s not always possible to get to the bank, and the personal check is dead. The only people that accept checks are landlords and people you pay by mail (utility companies, magazine, etc.)

Did I miss anything?