A couple of weeks ago, my big 1TB external hard drive died an ignoble death. I tried every trick I knew to recover it, with no success. I even took it to a local repair site to let them try their voodoo; no dice. Thankfully, some parts of the drive were reliably backed up, including all of my photos. *whew* However, I lost my entire music collection. *groan*

What have I learned from this?

• Don't be an idiot; backup yer stuff. In a stroke of good luck, I acquired an Apple Time Capsule a couple of months ago and have been using it for backups. Quelle suprise, it does just what it claims to do, and does it really well. Three cheers for technology that "just works"!



• The drive that died was a Western Digital My Book hard drive. Notice how big and chunky that case looks? If you open it up, you'll find out there are two 500GB hard drives inside, plugged into a little circuit board that stripes the drives together a 1TB RAID. This works, but it has a pretty serious implication; with a striped RAID data is scattered across both drives. Which means that if one drive in the RAID dies, you've essentially lost access to the data in the entire RAID. So a striped RAID basically has double the odds of a catastrophic failure compared to a traditional single hard drive. Yikes! Had I been thinking clearly, I never would have bought this drive in the first place.



• I've purchased a modest amount of digital music online from the Amazon MP3 store. I respect the fact that their music library is DRM-free, and encoded at a high bit-rate. But I was really sad to read this in their FAQ: "We are currently unable to replace any purchased files that you delete or lose due to a system or disk error." That tears it; I will no longer buy music that way. It's back to CDs for me.

Thankfully, I've been able to retrieve about 2/3rds of my music collection from raiding a friend's music library (not pirating; just retrieving copies of stuff I own and lost on the dead drive), and I recovered a little more from what tiny percentage of my music was on my little 8GB iPhone. Now I've pulled eight (8!!) boxes of CDs from the attic and am selectively re-ripping stuff to fill in the holes in my collection.

• Keep your CDs; don't sell them to the used CD stores unless you really don't like them. You'll never know when you might need that media again.

I'll conclude this little blog post with a relevant bible verse (you didn't know I had it in me, didja?):
To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.
- The Apostle Paul, Phil 3:1, advocating backups.

Sitting in a car, lizard-basking in the hot sun, when the iPod starts playing Pat Metheny's "Are You Going With Me?" from the album "Travels". In a blink I'm transported back to college. Long, hot Knoxville summers, on the balcony of the apartment in the student ghetto. Sitting in a canvas deck chair with my feet up on the railing, drinking a slushy margarita so fast I get brain freeze. Peecocrap speakers hanging by canvas straps from the deck roof, playing this album.

I saw Hamell on Trial at Mississippi Studios Sunday night. I have only recently been introduced to his music, and this was my first time seeing him perform.
It was like Anton Levay (aww, c'mon, look it up.) dropped religion and picked up an axe.



I wouldn't have thought that a 50-year-old bald guy with an acoustic (amplified) guitar would be considered "rock". But wow, he just shredded that guitar, creating a cudgel of sound.
His energy and enthusiasm and sharp, wicked sense of humor were infectious.

A hell of a show; I enjoyed it hugely, and would happily go see him again.

Someone posted three hours of 1983-era MTV to GoogleVideo, and I've been idly listening to it/watching it as I've been at the computer the last couple of days. Some thoughts and observations:

- For a guy who doesn't watch much TV, I kind of miss music videos. If you're going to have the boob tube on for stupid background noise and company, you could do a hell of a lot worse than music videos.

- I am struck by how "amateur hour" it all seems. Watching a "VJ" (snicker) fumble with dialog while waiting for an on-screen crawl to finish just drives home how loosely scripted the show was. It really does have a "filmed in someone's basement rec room" ambiance. I think this was a large (and under estimated) part of its audience appeal.

- Speaking of VJs, check out the "guido fro/mullet" on Mark Goodson. Dead sexy!

- In some ways, the commercials are just as big a bit of nostalgia as the show itself. "Hey man, is that Freedom Rock? Well turn it up, man!"

- 1983 was an interesting crossroads of music formats. "Available on four LPs, three cassette tapes or two CDs!" What, no eight-tracks?

- Commercials about video games are especially startling. Damn, that technology has changed in stunning ways. The early 8-bit systems like the Atari 2600 feel like horse and buggy technology compared to the current offerings. I can only imagine what the next 25 years will bring.

- It's sad to see the number of really major music acts that have mostly faded from the landscape since this era. Elton John, The Who, Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Talking Heads, Prince, Police, Steve Miller, Michael Jackson. Those weren't being shown as nostalgia acts, they were mainstream performers in 1983. Today, those bands are either defunct, irrelevant or milking the geezers (like me) on reunion tours. They sure aren't drivers in top 40 radio anymore.

Last night, I saw Mike Doughty at Mississippi Studios.

Before I saw something about the show, let me talk about the venue.
There's a doorfront on Mississippi Ave for the place, but that's not where you enter. Instead, you go in through Mississippi Station (a bar/pub next door), pass through the restaurant, out the back doors to the outside patio, keep going, then bear left into... what looks like someone's backyard. Up the stairs to the house, and go on in. Sure enough, the place is a converted home that sits fewer than 100 people. (Okay, I confess to being anal enough that I counted. 79 seats.) In such a small space, it seems silly to talk about a balcony, but there is a section of seating towards the back that is elevated just barely above the heads of the people ahead, and I found a pair of seats on the front row of that platform. I've seen Doughty in clubs of over 1000, and in this show, it was like he was hanging out in the living room with me. This place just become my favorite Portland venue. If there's someone I'm even mildly interested seeing that is playing at MS, I'm so there.

As for the show itself: I've seen Mike play smaller two man shows, and larger shows where he has a full band behind him. I prefer the smaller gigs, hands down. I just prefer the simpler, sparser sound when it's just Doughty and his guitar, maybe with one side man. Given that, last night's show made me really happy. He had one other musician with him, a fellow named Scrap Livingston playing cello and resonator guitar. (I had to do some digging on Google and Wikipedia to find the name of this. I hope I got it right. It looks like a standard guitar, except for the large, round metal platter on the body of the guitar, which gives it a sound a bit like a banjo.)

Mike and Scrap performed a great mix of audience favorites and some new songs from his forthcoming album, "Golden Delicious". Off-hand, I recall them playing 27 Jennifers, White Lexus, Busting Up a Starbucks, Grey Ghost, Janine, Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well, Madeline and Nine, Rising Sign, Sunken-Eyed Girl, Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train, Tremendous Brunettes, True Dreams Of Wichita, Unsingable Name. In between songs, mike and Scrap drew questions from the Question Jar, answering queries from the audience. We learned what the "Unsingable Name" was, which albums changed MD's life, his perspective on his past drug use, his recent experience on morning drive-time radio shows, his thoughts about our fair city, and much more.

All in all, it was a hell of a show, maybe the best I've seen in Portland (and I've seen some real winners)! A big, enthusiastic "Hell yeah!"

The Red-headed Amazon invited me to see Ben Harper at the Keller Auditorium last night, along with a batch of her friends. I only kinda knew the music of BH, had never seen a show at the Keller, and had met her friends just once or twice before.

Harper was great! His music is a blend of modern blues, reggae and pop, backed by an amazing bass player, drums, keyboards, two guitars and bongos. Think Jack Johnson, with a lot more soul and energy. He sort of reminds me of a modern Bill Withers (and he actually covered a BW song last night). At one point in the show, the band dropped to a bare whisper and Harper stepped to the apron of the stage and sang several verses to the house with no mic, no amplification at all, just a raw, naked voice to a crowd of a couple of thousand people. I was overwhelmed by how powerful that moment was.

The only cheesiness of the show was how over the top some of Harper's stage patter was. At one point, he congratulated the audience on their bravery in embracing such a creative and unique blend of music. Yeah, I've never felt so brave as when I attended a music concert. :-)

The Keller is a big house, a traditional proscenium theater. It's very wide, not terribly deep, and has two generous balconies. Our seats were about half way down, on the main floor, on the far left side. We had a pretty good view, and were able to stand on the wings when we wanted to stretch, fidget or bounce to the music. The crowd was incredibly receptive, applauding enthusiastically, standing for a bunch of the high-energy songs, and sitting quietly for the slower tunes.

And the RHA's friends are a cool bunch that I'm enjoying getting to know better. Sitting in the car after the show, with four people piled into the back seat was more giggly, silly fun than I've had in a while. Good people, good times. :-)

I just got home from seeing Cabaret at the Gerding theater at the Armory. Even as I was sitting in the balcony waiting for the show to start, I was a little subdued and resistant, not really feeling like sitting still for three hours, just not really in a "play" mood.

And then the opening scene came and I was a goner. I had forgotten how strong the music from this play really is, and the cast delivered it with all due enthusiasm, deviance and abandon. That scene opener was worth the price of admission.

As so often seems to be true in Cabaret, the MC steals the show, even over the little-big name in the leading role. Storm Large (sans Balls) does a fine job as Sally and really has the pipes to sell her songs, particularly the signature number. But she's fighting an uphill battle, the MC role is just way too fun. Google tells me that actor was Wade McCollum.

As a stagecraft geek, I feel obliged to mention the minimalist set. The stage was a large rotating platform, with a smaller, non-rotating platform in the middle of it. They used this to great effect, with a small set of pieces being loaded on the back of the large platform, a bed and desk for Cliff and Sally's boarding room for instance, while a Cabaret scene happened on the front of the platform. The rotating set, flies coming in and out and artful use of the curtains only added to the dynamics of the play, emphasizing the energy of scenes.

I only have two small snarks; the cabaret portion of the cast looked like extras from an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog; hairless, buff, ripped and cut. I was reminded of a college production of West Side Story I worked on, where the two teen gangs were populated by the cadre of cute gay boys in the theater department. The knife fight between the Sharks and the Jets looked less like urban violence and more like a cat fight. This was also the first play I've seen where the performers were micced. I'm used to that theater snobbery that says "If you can't project your voice to the very back row, you don't belong here." Maybe that's hopelessly outdated today.

Snarks aside, it was a hell of a show. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend it.

Jamie Stillway played at the Laurelthirst this past Friday. If you're not already familiar with her, she's a local jazz guitarist. I've heard her perform a couple of times before, often with Tim Renner on bass and Lesley Kernochan on sax. Friday night, it was just Jamie and Tim. She said it had been two months since her last gig, and the rust showed a little on some of her more rapid-fire fret work. But it was a noisy and distracted audience, and it seemed like she was playing primarily for her own enjoyment (which is perfectly fine with me).

I picked up her newest CD, Mell of a Hess and am still soaking it in. She's an amazing player and, of course, I'm crushing on her. :-) If you get the chance to see Jamie perform, I highly recommend it.

I saw They Might be Giants at the Roseland Theater last night.

The Roseland was a new theater to me; my Portland musical education continues! I mostly dug it; there was a large open floor for people who wanted to dance and crowd close to the stage, and then a wrap-around balcony with seats for the more restrained attendees. I opted for the balcony, and got a great spot on the far right side, front row. There were a couple of times when I wished I was in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd below, pogoing along with the hip young kids, but mostly I was happy to have a seat and to not be immediately in front of one of the massive speakers.

TMBG was one of the more rockin' shows I've been too lately (which probably says far too much about me), with plenty of subsonics warbling my yarbles. John and John were in fine form; JL looked like Schroeder, behind the keyboards in his striped tee. I liked the show well enough, but I realized that most of their music that I know comes from 15-year-old albums and I'm massively out of touch with their newer music. When I first started at Apple (many, many moons ago), my cube mate and I listened to Flood about once a day. This was back in the era of CDs, when no one expected to have 9201 tracks containing 525.5 days of music in their pockets.

Anyway, good show, good band! Tonight is Jamie Stillway, and Saturday is Strip-o-rama! Keep reading along as I valiantly try to ignore that school starts next week.

The Jonathan Coulton concert last night was a blast! I've seen a fair bit of music in PDX, but it's hard to remember when I've had more fun than at a JC show. The man has a talent for writing heartbreakingly sweet, poignant love songs that just happen to involve…
   a computer programmer and the receptionist at his work
   two fetuses who can see each other through glass wombs
   a married man and his financially independent girlfriend
   an evil scientist and the girl he has kidnapped and taken to his lair
   a squid from the ocean depths and the boats that sail on the surface
   a man and his new aluminum PowerBook
   the former planet Pluto and its moon, Charon
(Though not all in the same song.)

And then in between, he does paeans to Benoît Mandlebrot, mocks suburban living and does the best cover of "Baby Got Back" in existence.



Big, big fun! And I was gratified to see his following is growing. His previous show in Stumptown was at the White Eagle Saloon, and even with a SRO crowd, I would be surprised if that was 50 people. This time he was in the Mission Theater and the growd was closer to 300.

Wow, I love Portland Summers! In a town with real seasons, when the weather finally turns nice, the town just bursts into activities. Everyone is outdoors, there are festivals every weekend and more things to do than you can imagine. I have heard some amazing live music in Portland lately!

First there's free live music on the patio at the Doug Fir on Sunday afternoons, featuring the Pete Krebs Gypsy Trio! They play jazz from the early 20th century, inspired by Django Reinhart and the like. Fabulous musicians that you can watch from as little as ten feet away.



Then I heard the Ditty Bops play at the Aladdin Theater. This is a new band (to me), but I'm really enjoying what I've heard so far. And the concert was just packed, and more fun than you can shake a stick at.



I ran into Pete's crew again as they played backup for the Stolen Sweets in a free concert in Washington Park. The Sweets are the spiritual inheritors of the Boswell Sisters, tight vocal harmonies, and they really swing!



And then last night, I went to the Kennedy School to hear BED. This is a jazz quartet of vocals, guitar, stand-up base and trombone. I wouldn't have thought a trombone would work in an intimate jazz combo; it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't drown out everything else. But, this guy was capable of playing so soft and smooth, he blended in with the rest of the group seamlessly and then stepped it up slightly for the solos.

And coming up, I've got plans to see Jonathan Coulton, Loudon Wainwright III and They Might Be Giants!

For the first time in ages, I bought an album off the iTunes Music Store this morning!

I stopped using the iTMS entirely several years ago. The store was originally unveiled back in April 2003, and I was a big fan at first. I didn't like swallowing the digital-rights management embedded in all purchased tunes, but Apple had negotiated fairly liberal terms from the music labels and I didn't find any of the restrictions particularly onerous. But in April 2004, Apple changed the terms of their DRM. The changes were not burdensome; for instance, purchased music in a playlist could be burned to a CD only 7 times (down from 10 previously). The content of the change didn't bother me at all. But the implication, that Apple could change the terms of the purchase at any time, was deeply disturbing to me. And so I left the store behind. I've purchased a few CDs since then, mostly at concerts, but otherwise my music buying dropped tremendously.

Fast forward to today. Oh frabjous day, iTunes 7.2 has been released, providing support for high-quality DRM-free music from the EMI label. And I'm fairly confident this is merely the leading edge of a wave that will eventually include all of the major record labels. "They are grapes in the path of the steamroller of progress."

Finally, I can purchase music from the iTMS again, secure in the knowledge that Apple cannot mandate a change in the terms after the fact.

Hoo-rah! So, I've bought one album and one single this morning, and would have purchased more, except that the iTMS seems to be slowed to a crawl, no doubt from all the extra traffic.

Footnote for abrichar: This is not a paid endorsement. :-)
Footnote for sarahlibelle: The album was KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope". Further proof that I'm an old man.

After a quiet week of work and gym, I was ready to get oot and aboot Friday night. I hit the White Eagle Saloon, another McMenamin's spawn. After camping at the bar for a bit, I was able to lay claim to a vacating table.

Some years ago, I was preparing for my first trip to Amsterdam and encountered the term "gezellig". It's hard to translate, but it means something along the lines of "What are you in such a hurry for? Slow down. Relax. Here, smell this.", and it was especially relevant to Americans who might fume for twenty minutes in a restaurant wondering "Hellew? Is anyone ever going to bring us a friggin' menu?" One guide book even (jokingly?) suggested you bring along a deck of cards to keep yourself entertained whilst waiting. I didn't take it as a joke, and I have many fond memories of idling in a canal-side cafe, playing cards and enjoying the moment.

For some reason, I brought a deck of cards to the White Eagle last night. (Ahh, you thought I had forgotten all about that, didn't you? I am in the prime of my senility!) So I played several hands of whist around a number of bourbon and cokes, cajun tater tots and eventually a real meal.

But, truth be told, I was there for the music more than the food. The opening act was a fellow named Colin Lake. Colin is a talented lap guitar player, singing the delta blues. I admired his playing, but it was a little slow and low-energy for the venue. And maybe this marks me as a bigot, but especially after growing up in Memphis, there just seems to be something wrong about a 20-something white boy playing the delta blues. But he was a good performer, and I was winning hand after hand, so it was all good.

And then came the act that drew me out in the first place, a guy named Jonathan Coulton. This was my first time seeing JC live, so I didn't know what to expect. He performed alone, just a guy and his guitar, and had the casual unassuming pose of the former computer programmer that he is.

If you haven't heard of him before, Jonathan plays very upbeat acoustic pop/rock about... fractals, giant squids from the ocean depths, paeans/curses about Ikea, scientist villains in their mountain lair... you know, the usual sorts of things. It helps if you know Coulton is a contributing troubadour for Popular Science magazine, and once wrote an album for a single issue of the magazine with songs about the main articles.

The venue was standing-room only, and the crowd obviously knew JC and were big fans. There was a fair bit of singing along to assorted songs, which is great until you hear a large room of people singing "All we want to do is eat your brains" in full zombie-voice. Some of the people were entirely too enthusiastic about that topic.



It was a great night out, and I will definitely be looking for JC's next swing through town.

I went to the Doug Fir last night to see Erin McKeown sing.

I had never seen a show at the Doug Fir before, so I wasn't really prepared for the hipster log cabin feel of the place. Add to that, the opening act really drove home the Twin Peaks vibe. The singer, Eleni Mandell, had a quiet haunting voice, and the electric guitar player used lots of echo to achieve an effect that would have made Angelo Badalamenti smile. Really, I was waiting for a dwarf to come out on stage and dance during some songs.

But I'm not complaining; I really enjoyed it. The stand-up bass player in particular was really fun to watch, swinging from plucking a driving beat, sometimes picking up the bow to add to the creepy feel of some songs, and slapping time on the fret board during some of the more energetic bits.

If anything, Eleni reminded me a lot of early Erin McKeown; a very quiet, introspective singer-songwriter with folksy roots. But the Erin of today is a very different performer, very high energy, bouncy, and an undeniable rockabilly sound. Her sense of humor comes through in a playful fashion on stage now. I was introduced to Erin via my pal Anita, who heard her open for Mike Doughty. Anita is down in SF currently, and saw Erin play just two days ago. And then at tonight's show, who should show up but Anita's brother Ed and his gal pal Jill (the Thrill). Ed's in school down in Corvalis, and he and JtT decided to come up to see the show on Anita's recommendation. So they sat with us during Erin's set and seemed to enjoy the show.

I'm only irritated that I forgot to bring the camera. I had a great view of the stage and could have gotten some memorable shots. Sigh. Next time.