What Cheer, Netop?

Maybe I will go out and hang up posters another day. For now: netflix (The Wicker Man) and knitting.

Clearly my last poll was a little controversial. So let's try this again. These things:





[Poll #1024913]

(You can click on the pictures to see larger versions, although the level of detail still isn't that great -- sorry.)

have been pretty busy! I have a little lunch break time now, though, so here's a quick description of what's been going on.

Wednesday I went to a show at AS220. Performing there were Providence musical acts The Superchief Trio and The Sentimental Favorites, plus out-of-towner Corn'Mo, who played accordion and keyboard and whose stage manner reminded me a little of manfire.

Thursday I had a Killdevils show at Nick-a-Nees. Chris and I performed six songs for the first time: 'Barstow', 'Route 66', 'Big River', 'San Francisco Bay Blues', 'Down in the Dumps', and 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken?'. They all went quite well!

Also on this day I got an email from John Fuzek (head of RISA) asking me if I still planned to volunteer to help out at the sustainable living festival on Saturday. I responded saying that I was. He then responded and told me to bring my guitar, as one of the scheduled performers (Mark Cutler) had cancelled. OK!

Friday there was a potluck at chaos_are_me's new apartment.

While I was cooking up some pasta to take to the potluck my cell phone ring and it was Erminio Pinque, who as it turns out founded and runs Big Nazo, who is a little difficult to describe but is a kind of puppet troupe which is a Providence institution. They play at parties and parades and such, and they have a couple of musicians (a clarinetist and an accordion player) who perform with them in costume. The problem is that these musicians can't always make all the shows that Big Nazo gets booked for. Keith Munslow (of the Superchief Trio) told Erminiio that I play accordion, so Erminio was wondering if I might be interested in doing this sort of thing sometime ... ?

So I'm going to go over and do an audition for him at some point (at a date and time yet to be specified).

After that conversation, I headed over to the potluck and met chaos_are_me roommates, who probably now think of me as the guy who sings 'Watching Killer Robots Eat Your Head' and 'Cock-Sucking Son of a Bitch', which I guess is fair enough; I am that guy.

I will pause and note that this made three days in a row that I didn't get to bed before 1 am.

Saturday I had volunteered to help out at the Apeiron Sustainable Living Festival in Coventry. I was told to get there at 10 am, but I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to get there earlier in case I was needed, so I got up at 7 am, packed up all my stuff, drove down at 8 am, got there at 9 am, helped set up a tent for 45 minutes, then helped out at the RISA music tent. It was, of course, pouring, and things were pretty chaotic; by the time the music started, at around 1 am, half of the ground under the tent was covered by a large puddle that was probably three or four inches deep in spots. But it was fun anyway, and I did get to play the guitar, trading songs with Josie Crosby for probably an hour or so. (Josie was wearing rubber galoshes, while my feet were clad in sandals and mud.) The last act of the day (Erica Wheeler) was moved to the main stage, so we got to break everything down early, which I took as an opportunity to go home, as I was pretty tired.

I got home and decided that I would draw myself a bath, take care of a couple of little things, take the bath, call some people, and then either go to bed or (if I felt up to it) go out and do something social. In the event, I drew the bath, decided to lie down for a couple of minutes, and then slept for twelve hours. So, there it is.

Sunday I had practice with CMonti and then went to Massachusetts to visit my father. We had a nice dinner and played some guitar, and then I headed back home.

And that's about it.

I just got back from the Motif Magazine awards. Not to keep you in suspense, the winner of the Best Local Folk Act category (which the Killdevils was nominated for) was the Atwater-Donnelly Band.

( the rest of the results )

Thanks to everyone who voted for us. I think the Phoenix Awards will also be announced this week.

*phone rings*

Me: "Hello?"

Young adolescent: "Hello. Is this Jacob?"

Me: "Yes."

YA: "What are you up to?"

Me: "Oh, not much ..."

[longish pause]

Me: "Who is this?"

YA: "This is Nathan."

Me: "Oh."

[longish pause]

Me: "I'm sorry, but where do I know you from?"

YA: "We met at the Stop & Shop the other day." [Note: I haven't been to a Stop & Shop in months.]

Me: "Ah. Clearly we bonded."

YA: "Yeah, we did it."

[longish pause.]

Me: "OK then." [hangs up]

My home Internet connection was up and down this morning, so I decamped to the mall. I am working from the Borders at Providence Place today.

Which I guess means I'll eat lunch here. But which of the mall's eateries should I go to? So many choices! There seems to be a list here: http://www.providenceplace.com/html/mallattractions.asp

I figured I would turn this into a poll so I could SHARE THE ENNUI![Poll #888740]

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I guess I'll go eat in an hour or so, so get your votes in now!

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Edit: Maybe I should provide some information about these restaurants, so people who are not familiar with them have a basis for their votes.

Cafe Nordstrom -- I've eaten here a few times. It's one of those places where you take a plastic tray and carry it along past various stations where you can get different kinds of food and then you end up at the cash register where you order your food. They have sandwiches and salads and pizza and stuff.

Dave & Buster's -- D&B is kind of like what Chuck-E-Cheese would be if it were for adults, which is to say, kind of depressing. They incorporate a restaurant with standard american restaurant food: hamburgers, maybe a pasta dish or two, etc.

Fire + Ice -- this is a Mongolian barbecue, although they don't use those words.

Joe's American Bar & Grill -- I'm not sure I've ever been here, but it's a bar and grill, so I imagine it's like every other bar & grill in the world.

Napa Valley Grille -- I've never been here, so I dunno. I think it's kind of expensive, probably to help pay for the 'e' at the end of 'grille'.

Smokey Bones -- Chain barbecue.

The Cheesecake Factory -- I went to one of these in Chicago a while back for some cheesecake, not realizing it was a chain. Apparently they have other food too. Notable because a friend told me a story about how when someone from out of town asked where one should go for Italian food in Providence, one of her coworkers said, "The Cheesecake Factory!" and then, when it was pointed out that this isn't actually an Italian restaurant, said, "But they have everything!"

Uno Chicago Grill -- Remember when this chain was called 'Pizzaria Uno'? I guess that was too limiting.

crappy food court places -- including some generic chinese place, Spike's Junkyard Dogs, Johnny Rockets, I think some kind of generic Indian place, etc. (I know some of these aren't actually crappy restaurants, but they get to be called that anyway because they are, after all, in the food court.)

Here are some blurry cameraphone pictures I took tonight of large hurdy-gurdies. Both hurdy-gurdies were made by Providence musician Steve Jobe, who also plays violin, viola, and regular-sized hurdy-gurdies.

The occasion tonight was an open rehearsal for a production that's planned for September of 2007, a collaboration with three dancers. As such, they're currently still working on nailing down exactly what they're going to do and how the production is going to work, and after they ran through a piece they would ask the audience if they had any questions, suggestions, or other feedback. It was pretty neat! I was there for about an hour, and would have stayed longer except that I had another social engagement I wanted to go to. (If I didn't have a show tomorrow I would try to go back then, just to see what changed between the two rehearsals.)

Steve Jobe is, as I understand it, the head musician for the production -- he designed and built conceived of most of the instruments (which, apart from the hurdy-gurdies, included some glass bells and a gong-drum, which is sort of like a bass drum whose heads have been replaced by gongs), and he wrote most of the music (although it sounds like some of it is improvised and other of it is emerging somewhat organically over the course of the rehearsals).

One of the hurdy-gurdies is, I believe, the first large hurdy-gurdy that Steve Jobe built. It's basically a drone; unlike other hurdy-gurdies there aren't the buttons that allow you to change the pitches of the strings while the instrument is being played. The body of the instrument is based on half of an oil barrel, and the frame reminded me of a cannon's enclosure or, to a lesser extent, a wheelbarrow. There's a basic hand-crank at one end, which drives a wooden wheel, which agitates the strings, which provides the notes. Here are a couple of pictures of it:





The cart's wheels occasionally squeak loudly as the instrument is wheeled around. The dancers drag it around and crawl over it during the show, and there was a discussion at one point as to how best to avoid getting maimed while they were doing this.

The other hurdy-gurdy is more complex, and unfortunately I didn't get to see it be played. While hurdy-gurdy #1 just has four bass strings and no way of changing the notes, hurdy-gurdy #2 has strings in three different registers and does have a bunch of buttons or stops which can be used to play notes in the top two registers (if I understand its working correctly). Each of the registers has its own hand-crank, so playing this instruments takes three people (one to man the bass crank, another to man the other two cranks, and a third to press the buttons).





On Steve Jobe's website there are some links to videos showing hurdy-gurdy #2 being played. They take a really long time to load, unfortunately, but they are pretty cool. movie #1 movie #2 (I would probably watch the second video first).

The strangest thing to me in watching hurdy-gurdies (of any size) being played is that, because of the way they work, they tend to be at a pretty constant volume -- which means when someone plays one they tend to go along full bore until the end of the piece, when the music abruptly stops as soon as the crank stops being turned. With pretty much every other instrument there tends to be a bit of reverberation or quick diminuendo even after the player stops playing the instrument, but this doesn't seem to be the case with the hurdy-gurdy, and it takes a bit of getting used to.

I signed up for Steve Jobe's mailing list and when the show actually opens I will try to tempt people I think might be interested to come to it. Be warned!

Today at 1 pm I go to a hearing at City Hall, at the end of which I should have a piece of paper entitling me to play the guitar and accordion on the streets of Providence.

As advertised, there was a street painting festival today. It was located in the ice rink downtown. I took a ( bunch of pictures. )