Moments Per Minute

After a workweek spent touring upstate New York, I'm back.

It was a busy and stressful week that was also entertaining, interesting and more-laughs-per-minute than usual. The parts of Rochester I saw seemed hip and happening, relatively speaking. We had our event there at the science museum which amused me because I got to direct people to the mastodon. (Before you think it, yes, I'm easily amused.) Syracuse and Albany seemed much more economically-depressed. You have to wonder what will happen to those folks if our economy continues to flounder.

Our events, however, were very well-attended by local musicians and music industry folk and hopefully we gave them some new ways to keep playing. Random photos here. It was gratifying to watch people begin to put the pieces together of how the new music business works and how they can be a part of it and how faraway policy issues like net neutrality can affect them. It's not hard to become a bit blinkered in that I forget how little other people know about the issues that I spend my days on. Always good to get a reminder.

After the Albany event ended, Jean and I drove to New York City. We arrived in the wee smas of the night at the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel itself was vaguely hostel-like but unsurprisingly very cool, as I discovered the next morning when I work up enough to take in my surroundings.

I spent Thursday catching up a bit on work (have laptop/cell phone/Internet, will travel) and with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Good to see James, who I've known since high school. James is the man behind Dutch Angle Films and he's the reason I know anything about the art of film-making.

That evening, I saw my friend Stew's musical Passing Strange, a thoroughly enjoyable coming of age story with a rock/funk/soul soundtrack and some great acting performances. I've never really been into theater, but if I lived in New York, I think I'd develop a taste for it.

Whew. Now, I'm off to enjoy a weekend with very little planned.

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...

Rhymes with Stealin'

It's been a travelin' kind of week.

Monday was a quick trip to Philly where I visited my co-worker Kristin to talk through some website stuff. For lunch that day I had the most delicious vegetarian Italian hoagie at a place called Chickie's. They were stuffed with sauteed broccoli rabe, roasted red peppers, baked eggplant and provolone cheese. For the skeptical amongst you, I promise that broccoli rabe is GREAT in sandwiches.

Wednesday I left on my tour of upstate New York. This is part of the same free-educational-seminars-for-musicians-project that I went to Syracuse for. That trip was so useful and productive that I sorta, kinda, maybe, OK, I really did volunteer myself for this second trip. I'm beat right now, but it was worth it. If I ever forget how much you miss on conference calls and emails, this was a huge reminder. I met some great folks who are eager to learn more and to get as many people involved as possible, so mission was definitely accomplished.

I suspect the musicians' union as a concept is going the same way as other labor unions in that membership and leadership are aging and they're struggling to continue catering to their existing membership while also trying to find ways to appeal and be relevant to the younger, non-orchestra folks. Not an easy task.

One of our project partners, The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester have a mini gallery in their office with a cool metalwork exhibit going on. The metal chair in the photo was pretty comfortable.

I saw country/folk/blues singer Eilen Jewell (yup, it rhymes with stealin') last Saturday at the Iota Cafe. She opened there last year for The Holmes Brothers and I spent her entire set talking to them (and over her). And once I paid attention, I felt badly that I hadn't paid more. So, I wanted to see her and she of the smoky voice didn't disappoint. Her guitar player played the tastiest, honky-tonkish, chicken-pickin' licks, her upright bassist was slappin' away like one of those guys in the old black and white reels from the 40's wearing tails, her drummer brushed with abandon, and she crooned over it all to the dancers and watchers. In addition to originals, she covered Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday and Loretta Lynn ("Fist City").

Heard on the radio while in a DC taxi cab on Friday night, sidekick says to DJ: "You know, this is probably the only hip-hop show with an all Will Ferrell intro."

From Monday's NYTimes: the new, more personable Hillary Clinton "recently tried her hand at bowling an orange up the aisle during [her campaign plane's] take-off, a favorite game of the news media." If we have Clinton as President, will the White House Press Corps graduate to grapefruits or maybe even pomelos? Watch the party start then, yee haw!

Off to SXSW next week. As wrecked as I feel right now, I'm still excited ;)

Jeweler?

Two [correction: two days later, I'm now up to three...] near strangers in the last week have asked me if I'm a jeweler. You see, if you google my name, I'm not the first "Chhaya Kapadia" that comes up. The first is the founder and designer of Maya Jewels. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but are there really that many people out there that get an email from my work email account, google me, think I'm a jeweler, and then wonder what the jewelry has to do with music?

A crazy week of work travel is coming up. I'm heading to Philly on Monday and then I'm taking another run through upstate New York on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday where I'll be visiting Buffalo, Rochester and Albany (in that order). Oy. Not so bad though in that I love taking the train. After booking all those trains I'm convinced that Amtrak subsidizes all the rest of their routes by marking up the cost of the Northeast Corridor since it costs peanuts to travel the full width of New York but it's cheaper to fly DC-Boston.

I didn't get to see Wilco last week since tickets sold out within hours. What a great bill, too with the always awesome John Doe (of X and The Knitters) opening. Lucky for me, NPR has the whole show online.

On the techie front, I got to see Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) this week while working on my boss' new laptop and I think I have a gadget crush. I'm considering upgrading since the reviews look stellar. That and I've been looking into Office 2008. I'd be willing to pay a lot if Entourage (the red-headed, country bumpkin, Mac-based stepchild of Outlook for you Windows folks) worked better. Alas reviews are mixed.

DC News

The US Mint doesn't want to print "Taxation Without Representation" on the new DC quarter. Silly me. No doubt it's not necessary since our history-obsessed citizenry is fully aware that DC residents don't have a vote in Congress. Obnoxious.

In addition to lacking a vote in Congress, DC is also without many places to dig through music for us non-turntable-owning types. DCist runs through the music retailer landscape.

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It seems 11 hours at the office, no dinner, three Chimays and staying up till 4 talking didn't result in my feeling the best this morning. Ya think? Greasy breakfasts fix many a problem though.

No Jazz Flutes

Ah, Syracuse. Depending on whether you're feeling charitable, Worcester, MA or Hanover, NH come to mind. I was there for a 36-hour trip this past weekend to have meetings and check out venues for a seminar we're doing there in April. It wasn't a bad time, but 36 hours was plenty. While there I got to listen to lots of suits talk shop about the intricacies of the FCC and communications law. A bit brain-numbing. On the upside, I got to sit in on a lecture by Pandora's founder Tim Westergren. He's a very cool former musician with a business model that will hopefully continue to make money and introduce people to new music as long as Soundexchange doesn't do them in. Since they need people to listen to all that music and categorize it in umpteen ways, they actually hire those poor, starving, non-touring, Berklee College of Music grads who had to take all that music theory! Drat. If I'd know that I would've stuck with ear training and contemporary harmony...that is, as long as it never involved listening to the jazz flute.

I tie my brain in knots regularly over FMC's finances: how to pay for things, how to justify them, how to pay just enough - not too much but not too little either - for what we need, and how to explain it all. Funny, I never thought about its innate alternate-universe-esque weirdness until I read this article in the Non-Profit Quarterly. If you work for a non-profit or are considering it, this article should be required reading.

Alas, non-profit accounting is not as amusing as Chad Vader (courtesy of the dude from Innova I met in Syracuse).

The Long Tail's Chris Anderson has a free preview on the Wired website from his new book called, in case you miss the point, "Free".

On the political front: Harold Feld considers how Clinton's constant style vs. substance charge is more about campaigning style and how Obama and Clinton are using the Internet differently. Can't finish this without asking why? Seems Nader can't properly answer that question either.

Well, at least I only got a few points in the Dork category...