Live music is dead in Santa Rosa (and how we can revive it)

Anyone who plays any type of music on stage, whether it's blues, jazz, rock, or folk, can tell you that Santa Rosa's music scene for little indies is frustratingly whackluster. The big venues are crazy booked and/or shutting down, and the smaller ones don't accommodate their bands properly.

Ransom Rath is a band created by a friend of mine who I've known for quite an extensive chunk of time. In the most recent years, I've been gracious enough to really get to know some of his band members, who have truly become some of my closest friends. They have embarked on the wonderful journey of trying to book gigs in one of the most culturally-lacking live music environments I've ever witnessed. They just managed to book a show at the Vine, which was already canceled once; the owner is afraid of anything other than mainstream hip-hop garbage at his venue, not because he likes it (he may or may not), but because it helps his return on investment. He runs a business, and for any SUCCESSFUL business, the bottom line is what's most important. Live music doesn't bring in the cash money as much as radio trash music.

...But it doesn't have to BE this way!

I actually ACTIVELY REFUSED to have this night closed off with mainstream crap. I went out on a limb and stated that I believe we could get enough people in who actually want to listen to something different than what's playing at every single club/venue in Santa Rosa on ANY given Friday, or just by turning on the radio in your car. They booked us for entertainment, and we're gonna give it to 'em.

...and this is where I need YOUR help. Help, where WE need your help. This isn't just about our bands, it's about ALL bands. If people don't show love to events like these, they'll have no choice but to default to a DJ for Friday nights and have them do the same thing every other DJ is doing.

Please? This Friday? The Vine? 9pm? 21+? $5? If you could bring your friends, you'd automatically win. Don't do it for us. Do it for EVERYONE.

Conclusions of the Mushroom Kingdom

In this life we try so hard.... incredibly hard to quantify and understand it.

We are desperate to find the answer

And already by explaining I've gone too far. Describing it is, in itself, perpetuating the "trap."

Each life goal exists because we describe it and therefore create it.

And by describing that fact, I have created a construct of which to judge good and bad.

For instance, take the concept of the term "Building a family is good."

Why is it good? Disassemble the components of which building a family consists of, and their associated "costs".

Then, find the converse "benefits" and list them. Then, break down why each cost is a cost and why each benefit is actually a benefit.

Let's take, "have a child to be proud of makes me proud". Benefit? That statement can be construed as this one: having a child affirms your worth to others in your societal construct, which is an amalgamation of two distinct factors: The societal pressure which is produced by your immediate environment, and your own personal distinctions derived from what you agree and disagree with from said environment. What is also humorous is how your "personal" distinctions are also derived DIRECTLY from your environment, so in a sense, you are regurgitating what you have been taught directly as if it were your own creation, your immediate YOU, when you are simply a product of feedback loop which occurs. At that point, you can question as to the motivation of affirming your worth in your own manifested life situation, which, in most cases, ties directly to fear of lack of control. Being perceived in your choice of manner is control. Which, in itself, is not necessarily a "bad" thing.

Control extinguishes the fear which ties directly to your basic set of impulses, which are the ONLY constants which we can synthesize our judgement constructs.

An example of a completely fabricated judgement construct is expressed in the concept of "not having a child by a certain age" which, by itself, does not directly tie to any direct impulse. Fear is unique in the sense that it thrives on fabricated judgement constructs; the more that exist, the easier it is to associate a "good and bad" value criterion, which introduces fear. These value constructs also don't actually create happiness; rather, they provide relief when the fabricated fear is eliminated; had it not existed in the first place, there would be no fear to be relieved from. Therefore, it is zero sum. The factors which drive his construct are the biological tendencies involved which are not constructed but rather already exist as a mechanism to perpetuate our species. Overcoming this is only a matter of resisting an impulse, which may or may not benefit your personality construct. The good and bad connotations are meaningless in that regard, since they are only imagined concepts. You can then take the same route and describe the "costs" and "benefits" of denying certain impulses. All paths lead to only the most simple and basic impulses.

fruitless

pointless

Wonderful in its nothingness

it doesn't matter

futility

is where all paths lead

Life is

Why ask the question?

why ask that question?

our entire understanding of our lives is governed by our impulses

Introduction

If you're reading this, I've certainly pointed you to it. This is my semi-hidden blog that I created in order to document the LOW points of my music life. I know it seems a big negative to only post about the BAD events which happen, but I figure writing it all once is BETTER than having to tell the same depressing story time and time again to every person who asks.

I'm going to start off this blog with a bit of a doozy; this past week I had the great opportunity of creating the presentation for the gang music awards, held at the Game Developer's conference in San Francisco. Not only that, but I was also given the opportunity to play one of my songs live in front of the entire audience, and towards the end of the show, no less. Setup went without a hitch, and our practice run of the song was phenomenal.

However, things quickly changed after the show started. We never had a solid run-through, so some of the cues were totally on the fly and caught me off guard. The man in the back running the show basically seemed angry at me the entire time(all 3 hours worth), and to make matters worse, my presentation acted glitchier than it had ever acted. For instance, whenever I played a video, it would loop the video(sound and all) even if I specified it NOT to loop, which resulted in:

• Random, LOUD sounds to play during a presenter's speech
• more yelling from the guy in back

It was very stressful. Not only that, but Tommy Tallarico had requested a slight change in the show order that I must not have remembered, and since his show order didn't match with mine, I ended up playing the wrong video at the wrong time. I got around this error easy enoug with some quick mouse clickage, but the problem would come back to haunt me later when the out of order items I copied to the front showed up again later in the show. I had to skip through them quicky, but I still heard taunting murmurs from the audience. No good.

Probably the worst part of the night is when in the middle of the BEST SOUND DESIGN category nominee listing, the entire flash component FROZE UP. Completely dead. People were left hanging, the presenters had no idea what to do, and I felt like my entire world caved in underneath me. Luckily (or unluckily) enough, the presentation glitched out and skipped directly to the nominee listing, so they were able to announce the winner.

Right after that, Planetskill was up! Already nerved out of my skull, I tried to quickly shake off the bad feelings and FOCUS - it was GO time. I had Paul Lipson be the spacebar man and told him to count to 10 and then hit the trigger. I start walking to the stage; Ransom is walking in on the other end... the song STARTS, and I hit the guitar trigger... and...

Success! My complicated midi setup worked flawlessly! However, when I finally met at center stage, I realized that we had a small problem:

Ransom's guitar output no sound!

That's right; we played the entire set without his guitar sound. No lead guitar. We played it off rather decently (as shown in THIS vide0) but it was still a huge heartbreak. Ransom later found out that it was due to him not taking the amp out of tuning mode after he tuned up. Shit happens.

For the rest of the presentation until the last category, there was no sound. Luckily, for the Lifetime Achievement award, the winner gave the world's longest speech, and I was able to go in and trouble shoot the sound really quickly, which resulted in AUDIO OF THE YEAR having all of its sound working. A good ending to a relatively poor-executed show (on my end).

I was planning to network with people after the show, but it was too much of an embarrassment to even consider doing such a thing.

The people at G.A.N.G. don't seem to be furious, so that's a plus. All in all, the biggest issue I have with the night is that I spent so much time on this project and got so little sleep, tried so hard and worked efficiently for a very solid stretch, and it STILL didn't turn out right. I've always been a last minute guy, but I took special care not to do that with this. The last time I tried to plan something out so grandiose I got shafted as well. One of these times, that won't be the case, and I'll be ready.