Saturday: Travel Day

Buffalo as seen from my hotel room:


One often wonders whether flight attendants have to demonstrate how to buckle a seat belt – doesn’t that seem completely unnecessary? But this afternoon a group of tribal Asians were on the flight from Chicago to Buffalo who were not familiar with seat belts and Jon had to help an old man next to him get buckled up. After landing the man also could not release the seatbelt himself. Like a visitor from another planet. I do like to see that sort of thing.. people who are clearly different.

I was thinking about my post Pirates and Thieves and how complicated that whole issue really is. A person who rips 19 album and gathers up all of those files, perhaps adds cover images to the files, uploads them to rapidshare or a similar service, that person invests quite a bit of time and effort. They must like the music, must see their making the music available in this fashion as a way to either get some credit for “liberating music” from fellow file-sharers, or perhaps they even imagine they are helping these albums get heard.

Take these two blog pieces about books and piracy and Google searches and ranking for example: an author wrote this piece about his book and received this reply a few days later. Interesting, complex, complicated.

Society has not digested the Internet (and many other things – e.g. when to use and when to silence cellphones etc.) yet… we are still unclear about what is OK and what isn’t. This has nothing to do with what the law says is not OK, but that has always been so throughout history! What the law says is not permissible and what we think is not permissible are two separate islands with a whole lot of grey area in between.

There was more I had thought up about this, but I am getting tired – I had two hours of sleep last night – and perhaps I can be clearer in the Morning.

New Release

This Summer we are releasing two versions of the album “Santa Fe”. This album is the completely re-worked music of The Santa Fe Sessions (which has been out-of-print for a couple of years), with a few unreleased versions (2 the Night, Santa Fe, Borrasca), with many new parts and newly mixed and mastered. I think it sounds great.

The tracklist is as follows:

01. Barcelona Nights
02. Isla del Sol
03. 2 the Night
04. Dancing Under the Moon
05. Heart Still/Beating
06. Reaching Out 2 U
07. Santa Fe
08. Borrasca
09. Turkish Night
10. La Rosa Negra
11. Havana Club
12. Snakecharmer
13. Morning Arrival in Goa

The music is identical on both albums. The first image shows the Lifescapes CD that will be available at Target, starting in June.

The second image shows the CD that will be available ONLY at our concerts. We will not sell this CD from our website or in download form. We will have these CDS with us on the Spring tour that starts this weekend.

Complete Spring Tour

We added a couple of dates to the Spring tour and here is the complete list:

May 01 – Buffalo NY – Tralf Music Hall
May 03 – Fall River MA – Narrows Center for the Arts
May 04 – Ogunquit ME – Jonathan’s
May 05 – Boston MA – Scullers
May 06 – Londonderry NH – Tupelo Music Hall
May 07 – New York NY – BB Kings
May 08 – White River Junction VT – Tupelo Music Hall
May 10 – Annapolis MD – Ramshead
May 11 – Alexandria VA – Birchmere
May 12 – Norfolk CT – Infinity Hall
May 13 – Ridgefield CT – Ridgefield Playhouse
May 14 – Bay Shore NY – Boulton Center
May 15 – Sellersville PA – Sellersville Theater
May 18 – Minneapolis MN – Dakota Jazz Club
May 19 – Minneapolis MN – Dakota Jazz Club
May 20 – Chicago IL – Old Town School of Folk Music

The musicians will be:
OL – Flamenco Guitar
Jon Gagan – Fretless Bass Guitar + Keyboard
Michael Chavez – Percussion
Houman Orei – Percussion


Jon on stage at the Teatro Sociale in Trento, Italy, during soundcheck, on April 6th.

Pirates and Thieves

Ottmar Liebert – Collection [19 CD] (1990-2010) MP3 – 320
Ottmar Liebert – Collection [19 CD] (1990-2010) MP3 – 320

Why limit oneself to sharing one album, when one can share 19 of them. What an ass! Why do I even bother to record anything at this point?

As Dave pointed out in the comments, I record for the fans who aren’t douche bags (his words).

True, and also for myself.

By the way, I watched the DVD Inside Job the other night – the film that won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature this year – more on Wikipedia. Talk about a culture that is unsustainable! Educating, infuriating. It’s a must-see!

Also, we received our Santa Fe CDs, which means that they will be available from us during the Spring tour. I am not pleased with a way the cover looks. Because sharpies don’t write well on coated stock we switched to printing on the other, uncoated, side. The first album cover printed on the uncoated stock was Petals On the Path, and it looked OK. Well, this one doesn’t look very good. (what happens when one is in a rush and has no time to approve the actual printing)

But, here is another way to look at this:

It’s a limited edition of 1,000 CDs… because once these are sold we will completely re-design the cover!

The music on the CD, on the other hand, sounds amazing. I am really happy with the way it turned out.

Tuesday Links

The 20th Century Limited:
Sunday Streamline #29: Dreyfuss Rockets

50 Watts
BLICKFANG: The Eye-Catching Covers of Weimar Berlin

Speakeasy – WSJ
Werner Herzog on Why He’s Suspicious of Modern Art

Volume Brooch
Oh, and of course it’s worth noting that, “These go to eleven.”

The World’s Last Typewriter Factory Is Closed – Yahoo! News
The World’s Last Typewriter Factory Is Closed

Privacy and incentives – Marco.org
The reason everyone’s up in arms about the iPhone’s location database, I think, isn’t that the data is particularly incriminating or embarrassing for most people. Rather, we’ve simply been reminded quite how much of our lives these convenient pocket computers are privy to.

People would be similarly freaked out, if not more so, if they saw how much Facebook and Google know about them.

Fred Eerdekens | Design Milk
Fred Eerdekens plays with light and shadow using a variety of materials — from plants to wire to cereal boxes — to spell out words. What looks like a simple arrangement of objects takes on a whole new meaning once light hits it in just the right spot.

Unseen — For Nihon | Various (mp3 / flac)
After learning about the tragic events of the Japanese earthquake on March 11th my wife, Hollie, and I were talking about ways to help. We decided to ask a few friends to join a compilation to help raise money. A few quickly became many as we were overwhelmed and warmed by the eagerness of these musicians to get involved.

“For Nihon” features some of the premier names in ambient / experimental music. 100% of the profits from the sale of this album will be donated to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund set up by New York’s Japan Society.

BBC News – Brains of Buddhist monks scanned in meditation study
Brains of Buddhist monks scanned in meditation study

Banned books return to shelves in Egypt and…
A number of highly political titles censored by the regime of ousted Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali are now returning to the country’s bookshop shelves.

Main Page – GigaPan Time Machine
Explore simultaneously in space and time with GigaPan Time Machine