Mixing It Up

My latest score courtesy of my office: The Beastie Boys' newest all-instrumental The Mix-Up. It's reminiscent of The In Sound From Way Out, which I've played at more gatherings than I can count. There are more moving parts, but you wouldn't mistake it as anyone other than the Beasties...groovy. Also, in the same batch, the Sondre Lerche soundtrack to "Dan in Real Life". He's gone all adult contemporary. Ouchie.

Radiohead's In Rainbows is growing on me. Speaking of, they got one of those remix-our-song contests going on here. Points off for mixing each instrument together for you so you only get to remix five tracks - you know they somehow used at least 48 tracks.

I was at Arts Advocacy Day on Monday. Along with media training and learning how to talk to your elected officials, I got to take a course in lobbying which included a detailed lesson on how bills turn into laws and all the detours-to-nowhere they can take. It was vaguely like my high school civics class except more interesting, possibly because I was paying attention this time around. If nothing else, The West Wing now makes even more sense.

Saw Lust, Caution the other night. It was a quiet and reserved but intense film. Tang Wei, the lead actress spins a web and then gets herself caught in it - and you watch it happen on her face. She gives an amazing performance.

Just returned from a good time in Buffalo where FMC presented a day long seminar for musicians on how to make money from their music and how to get involved in policy issues that affect them. SRO crowd that was engaged and diverse. More seminars coming at the end of the month in Rochester, Syracuse and Albany. Tell your musically-inclined friends!

OK, back to sitting on hold with the bank and the person who needs "signatory" spelled four times...