quotes for the new year

Chatting with my daughter, I blurted out,

"There has never been a better time to be alive."

She responded,

"Every moment is a new beginning."

put those into google!

Happy New Year! Peace on Earth!

more Caroline...

Sweet Caroline is the only tune I can think of where an audience has sang along to a horn part. Amazing. Arranger should get a lifetime grammy for that alone. In the past fifty years of pop music history, there's been alot of songs, alot of hits...and somehow Sweet Caroline comes out on top...mystifying...

Sweet Caroline

Sweet Caroline. Written and performed by Neil Diamond. A song written in a Memphis hotel room the night before a recording session in 1968 that went to number 4 on the charts. Will some one please explain to me why this tune is the most popular sing along today?

I confess I have googled and been unable to find out enough about the origins of it's resurgence to asuage my obsession. Wikipedia says it's popular in Ireland and the UK at weddings. The Red Sox play it between innings. College marching bands. Movie soundtracks.

Here's my basic working theory of the moment. An innocuos, easy listening, mid-tempo, late 60's, throw away ditty that is a little catchy goes viral after a few frat boys and/or Irish football fans latch onto it in a druken stupor. A testament to how something can innocently spread. On one hand a sound theory but on the other completely ridiculous. Why this song? I could get specific about why it is a poorly written song and fill page after page. Is it because a bad song lends itself to this role? I feel compelled to delve into the sociological and mystical aspects of popular music, mob-mentality and group consciousness, ritual, modern culture trends, etc. when trying to unravel and resolve this puzzling phenomena...how silly...just a tune, no big deal...nope,not there yet...please help me...more later...

mission statement

a joyous, playful act

an assertion of being and faith

pretentiously lacking ambition

morally ambiguous

smugly positive

forcefully absurd

acutely unaware of self or style

masked

fleeting

folly

this

Trend-spotting - "The Truth"

Trend-spotting -  "The Truth"

I was watching comedian Dave Chapelle  on "Inside the Actor's Studio", a Bravo Network TV interview show, and he closed the show by saying, "There's the Truth... everything else will fall away". I can dig it. But then I thought about how trendy "The Truth" is. Keepin' it Real. Ya gotta keep it real, right?  "Reality" shows will not go away.  Investigative reporting. Muckraking websites. Politics. Religion. Talking heads throwing around their sincerity with the big sell attitude of Madison Avenue. Documentary films were never more popular. Inquiring minds want to know. Who's really behind that conspiracy? Everyone shocked that that memoir was faked. Was that athlete taking drugs? The Truth is out there. Fox Mulder never found it, but dammit, it's important. Mr. Starr wants some transparency and he wants it now. Who's zoomin' who? No, really! The truth needs to come out. It's gonna make us all feel alot better. Penn and Teller have a show called "BullS**t". There was a best seller called "On BullS**t".  I liked the book, thought it had some interesting things to say,  and I'm as much into "The Truth"  and what's real as the next guy. I'm just making an observation. The Truth is trendy. And this trendiness is making it invisible.
When one actually looks for the truth, one finds that it is murky, ill-defined, elusive, confusing, and complicated. "The Truth? You can't handle the Truth!" By attempting to bring it into focus, you lose it, very much the way physicists cannot fix the position of subatomic particles. Bummer? Not really. It is something to be celebrated. What's being currently lost in our culture is that the Truth can actually be found in the most fantastic places. Yes, that memoir should have had a bigger disclaimer. Bad boy! But the Truth was in there even more than if he had stuck more to the facts. Fiction brings the Truth to light quite well. Watch "The Sopranos". You'll get the whole wise guys thing in a nutshell, the truth splitting it open. When children play, the Truth is the last thing on their minds, yet what they pretend is more real than Court TV could ever dream to be. That tingle on your neck when a singer transfers a little magic to you just for a moment? There's the Truth. Read a good poem. Hell, write a good poem. Now you are getting closer. Don't fret that you can't fix its position or clearly define it. The Truth is out there. It's all around you. It's suffocating you, actually. Look for a crack and take a breath. And enjoy the pleasures of a trend somewhere else.
Oh yeah, Mr. Chapelle? Shortly before or after he spoke of the Truth, in almost the same sentence, he said, " I'm just a comedian, just looking for what's funny, just throwing it out there." That's more like it!  

"Traced" a web movie clip

I took a few passages from a book entitled "Lipstick Traces" by Greil Marcus, flew them into Keynote(a Power Point style presentation app. for the Mac), and rendered a Quicktime movie and .avi file. Enjoy!

www.streamload.com/pstacey/Traced.mov

www.streamload.com/pstacey/Traced.avi

Paddy's Brew

I grabbed an mp3 of Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew". Then I sliced it, diced it, stretched it, looped it, slathered some effects on it, eq'ed it, and rendered it; then I posted it here...

www.streamload.com/pstacey/electronic/PaddysBrew.mp3

hope you like it...

Long distance recording 20 years later

So twenty years later, I get an e-mail from my bandmate when I was in college. Yes , we're both still making music. We talk about the old band, the old songs, and decide to re-record a tune we wrote together back then...we exchange e-mails and mp3's and after a while, we had something... a record made long distance twenty years after the fact, amazing!

The tune's called "She's So Unpredictable"

special guest Mike Echols on bass

link below....enjoy!

www.streamload.com/pstacey/Solo/Unpredictable.mp3

Mash it up Right!

My brother asked me to make a "wacky mix" from the recordings of the Groove Thangs , the band we had together from '84-'91. All the kids are doing it these days...it's called a mash up.
We think it came out great. Imagine a 15 minute dance mix of all your fave GT tunes, only nuttier, and you've got the idea.

"Mash It Up Right" can be found at...

www.streamload.com/pstacey/GrooveThangs/MashItUpRight

Thanks for listening!

Gameboy Music!

I love retro, lo-fi electronic music...the blips from Ms. Pac Man make my heart sing! I found a company in Germany that makes an 8 track, fully editable, music sequencer/composer that's a cartridge for the Nintendo Gameboy!  www.nanoloop.com    

My first foray into this latest muse is called "nano2" and can be found here...

www.streamload.com/pstacey/electronic/nano2.mp3

I plan to perfrom "live" with my Gameboy sometime this year, check for updates here!

"When I press this little key, it makes a little melody!" Kraftwerk

Thanks for listening!

Homage to Ohm

Patrick Stacey's Homage to Ohm

This was an expiremental electronic improvisational performance piece that I put together in '04-05.

four live recordings and a promo movie clip are at...

http://www.streamload.com/pstacey/electronic/HomageToOhm

promo copy from project below...

For his most ambitious project in his 20+ year, wildly eclectic career, Patrick has constructed a one of a kind sound control station, painstakingly sampled the pioneers of early electronic music, and created an experimental audio abstraction unique in its history, form, and presentation - Homage to Ohm.

A project going into its second year, Patrick started by delving into the roots of his life long passion, electronic based sound, and came across a three disc compilation recently released by Ellipsis Arts entitled "OHM: the early gurus of electronic music". Using computer based digital signal processing technology, Patrick methodically extracted hundreds of sound bites from throughout the collection, loaded them into a performance based application from Ableton software called "Live", and slowly put together a piece that is all at once an improvisation, a tribute, a science, and an art.

Needing a bit more than his I-Mac laptop to execute his vision, Patrick enlisted the help of his father and designed and built a custom control desk to transport and present his medley of devices in a user friendly and efficient system that not only adds to the experience, but inspires it.

Patrick is currently promoting "Homage to Ohm" through live performance, the Internet and other media, and would be pleased to assist with any inquiry.

"Mush" a short film online

I've been looking into the history of the U.S. nuclear testing program lately and got inspired to make a short film, now posted online. It's called "Mush" and it includes footage from "Trinity and Beyond", a documentary on the subject I lifted off the TV, as well as sound bites from a lecture by Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize winning physicist who was one of the only direct eye witnesses to the first "Trinity" nuclear test.  Feynman's words come from  "Los Alamos From Below," a commemorative CD included with the book CLASSIC  FEYNMAN. More info?  The link is:
http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall05/006132.htm
There's also music from Kubrick's "2001". It's five minutes long.

Link below. Thanks for watching!

www.streamload.com/pstacey/MushMpegMovie/MUSHMOVIE.mpg