I’ve finished The Bee LP! and you can download it for free right now. So what are you waiting for? Go get it!

I’ve just started working on a new track for the Bee LP entitled “Drones.” Appropriately enough, it is (mostly) in an ambient style, with droning synthesizers.

A rough version is posted now on the album page for your interim enjoyment.

My latest full-length album project is going to be entitled simply Room 34 but, honoring some of my favorite bands that have released self-titled (or untitled) albums, such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel and Weezer (and probably others I’m just not thinking of at this second), it has an unofficial title, based on the cover: The Bee LP.

For the first time since I began recording music in 1990, I’ll be putting out a release with cover art not designed by me. The cover art was drawn by my five-year-old son, Fletcher. It also serves as inspiration for the music on the album… or at least for the titles of the songs, each of which will be bee-themed.

Learn more at the album’s official page!

And it’s not just type case.

As I’ve mentioned, I have taken a shine to Amazon MP3 as my primary source for music downloads now. Sorry, Apple. You know I love you, but Amazon’s just doing it better. Better selection, better prices, and usually better quality. Plus everything’s MP3, not AAC. And no DRM, ever.

And while I don’t anticipate ever switching media players (the iPod and iPhone have served me well, even if you’ve been stumbling a bit lately). My new car’s CD player supports MP3 (and, ugh, WMA) CDs, but not AAC. And yes, I keep an iPod nano in the car (note to potential thieves: no I don’t), but it’s still convenient to load up several albums’ worth of music onto a single CD and pop it in. No annoying cords or dangerous behind-the-wheel iPod fiddling.

So anyway… yeah, Amazon MP3. And MP3s in general. Read more »

Don’t tell my wife, but I’m in love. It happened this afternoon at the new Best Buy at the Mall of America. No, it’s not an affair. It’s a Jaguar Bass.

I’ve been planning to buy a new bass for several months now. My standard Fender Jazz is OK but it’s just not cutting it. The pickups are the big problem. Too buzzy. And one of the volume pots slips. I took off the cover plate and tried to tighten it, but I couldn’t. It’s a fine bass, but I just want something better. I got spoiled when I had an American Jazz Bass a few years ago. So I’ve been planning to upgrade to the Deluxe Jazz. Not quite as nice (or as expensive) as the American, but it has the same Made-in-USA pickups, plus active electronics, at a more reasonable price. And of course it is a 5-string, which has become second nature for me.

So as much as I was dazzled from the first time I saw it a few years ago by the Jaguar’s overwhelming array of switches, knobs and dials, the fact that it doesn’t come in a 5-string model was always a deal breaker for me.

But as long as I was there at Best Buy today, and it was too, I figured, why not just pick it up and try it? Big mistake. Before I even plugged it in, I could tell what it was going to sound like, and that I was, like, totally going to want it! And I did.

The sales dude really knew how to work it too. He was friendly and helpful from the get-go, and then he backed off and just let me play. After a couple of minutes of noodling around and testing the intonation across the fretboard (the next most critical thing about a bass after good pickups), I started playing a bit of the bass line from my favorite Yes song, “Heart of the Sunrise.” A minute later, “Roundabout” started playing on one of the PA demo units across the room. Wrong song, but right album. Kudos to him. If I do get the Jag (which seems more likely with every passing second as I write this), I’ll probably go back there for it. And he doesn’t even get a commission!

It doesn’t have 5 strings, but it sounds great and it looks great (and it comes from Fender’s Japanese shop, which is second only to the one in Corona, California for quality, at a significantly lower price), and it’s pretty much the same price as what I was planning to pay for the Deluxe Jazz. Good deal! (Of course, I also want to get a microKORG, but maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.)

OK, first off let me say that I have finally arrived at an age where I can honestly and without shame say that, no sir, I just don’t really like A Prairie Home Companion that much. And that’s a tough statement to make as a born-and-bred die-hard self-styled intellectual liberal Minnesota DFLer. (That’s Minnesota’s slightly-more-liberal-and-even-more-union-friendly flavor of the Democratic party.) And I think the thing I dislike most about the program, more than Garrison Keillor’s meticulously cultivated faux-folksiness is the nauseating preponderance of jazz violin in the featured music. I hate jazz violin. (And I love the fact that it has yet to earn its own Wikipedia entry.)

Well, I’ve been working on some new music. In the spirit of the title of a track from the latest Joe Satriani album, I’m currently calling it “Dun Dun Tsh.” And right now I am really enjoying it because it’s drowning out the jazz violin that’s currently playing at the Caribou Coffee where I’m sitting as I write this. I’m not really sure how I’d classify this music, but it’s definitely inspired by the “electronic breakbeat jazz” work of Revolution Void.

Once I have a finished version I plan to release this as part of a new series of free downloads distributed under Creative Commons licensing.

For now, here’s a rough mix for you to enjoy. I said enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Despite the fact that it was the decade of my youth, for which I am often nostalgic, I don’t often look back on the ’80s decade itself with a great deal of fondness. Sure, there was Pac-Man, The Breakfast Club, Duran Duran, various other things in popular culture that I liked. But that’s offset with Ronald Reagan (no I do not consider his presidency a positive, and I could catalog the ways if I cared to, but I don’t), hair bands, this version of Pac-Man, hideous fashion (yes, it was a reaction to the ’70s and its own hideousness, but as bad as it was, ’70s fashion never produced the likes of these fashion nightmares), etc. etc.

And yet, thanks once again to the brilliant musical programming of MPR’s The Current, I’ve become drawn to the unabashed nostalgia for that dark decade served up dripping in digital synth excess courtesy of M83’s latest album, Saturdays = Youth. After contemplating it for weeks, I finally bought the album on Amazon MP3 this morning, and have been listening to it nonstop (currently on my fourth time through).