Chris Thile mini-review: I could have written a review in advance of last night’s concert by Chris Thile’s and his “new” band at the Belcourt theatre in Nashville. All the superlatives I anticipated that I’d use are, sure enough, the ones I would use. However, I would not have known that Thile’s band called “How to Grow a Band” would not have the guitarist featured on his soon-to-be-released CD and on his MySpace site, but, rather Bryan Sutton would be playing guitar. (Now that I look back at it, I should have noticed that was Bryan playing on the YouTube video of them practicing.) Four years ago, I mentioned on this blog a rather remarkable time I was able to hear Chris and Bryan play together. If you ever get the chance (like tonight in Boulder, Colo.) to hear them, do it. When Chris Thile’s new CD comes out on September 12, I will review it and the concert in more detail. I’m thinking it should be a podcast.

Technorati Tags: bluegrass, chris thile

Second Life virtual state delegates up for grab: Forget Iowa. Now potential presidential candidates are heading to Second Life to campaign. I think campaigning on Second Life is right up there with doing an interview with Steven Colbert. High risk, questionable reward and lots of accolades from people who rarely vote. Don’t get me wrong. I think appearing on Second Life is very appropriate for politicians. Many I observe live permanently in make-believe worlds.

Update: rexblog’s peephole into the world of Second Life, Eric Rice, has posted a screen shot from the “event.”

Technorati Tags: second life

Pushed Flash 2.0, or what the heck is MySI? Is SI.com’s new screensaver thing any good? I wouldn’t know. It doesn’t work on a Mac.

From their FAQ:

Q. What operating system do I need to run mySI?
A. mySI will run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems.

Of course, Mac users are not known for being influential (as this photo from a recent conference of “citizen journalists” held at Harvard University displays) so I can completely understand why the brilliant marketers at SI.com would launch a Windows-only version. (Note for any humorless Cult of Mac member that may drive by this post: That was irony.)

Since I can’t try it out, I’ll trust my friend Staci Kramer at Paidcontent.org, who says, “it makes eye-catching use of one of Sports Illustrated’s greatest assets: its photography.”

Again, I can’t try this out, but this sure sounds like some type of “son of Pointcast” product to me. (Push Technology 2.0?) If you don’t recall Pointcast, the concept was similar: a screensaver with syndicated content that was periodically updated. Advertisers loved it because it was like TV (they thought) and the idea of having their logos flying around people’s computer screens was extremely compelling to them. The problem with Pointcast (Push Technology 1.0) however, was that limited bandwidth and processing power ten years ago meant that your computer would suddenly slow down to a crawl whenever Pointcast started downloading something in the background. After a few times of that happening, you’d set it to update manually and then soon, you’d forget that you had it. Oh, yeah. And the other thing: People don’t want advertisements flying around their computer desktops. Really, they don’t. I can’t believe it, but I think it’s a scientific fact.

MySI is an advertising-supported screensaver from a company called MercurySports Network that has some cool-looking son-of-Pointcast things it calls Screenservers (that’s Screenservers® for you registered trademark buffs). According to the MecurySports site, there will be a Mac OS X version soon. When that happens, I’ll download this specific Screenserver® from the Tennessee® Titans® and try it out. Who knows? Now that broadband is universally available, maybe pushed flash can work. But if it has ads flying around my desktop, I’m thinking probably not.

Technorati Tags: push

Virgin 2.0: Tim O’Reilly is trying to put toothpaste back in the tube with this blog post: “In conjunction with the announcement of the new Web 2.0 Expo and technical conference, I’m also pleased to report that CMP has agreed to narrow the scope of enforcement of the Web 2.0 trademark registration.”

Technorati Tags: web2.0

Free public domain book PDFs: If you’re interested in a source for over 19,000 public domain books that you can access for free in several different formats, hundreds of volunteers have been working for a few decades on Project Gutenberg. (History of the project. Nightly RSS feed of books added.) Oh, and this morning Google announced (and here) they are going to start doing it also.

Technorati Tags: google, project gutenberg

Clarification – All those Mini Coopers are not Jim Cooper: This morning, my son and I were driving on West End in Nashville and passed by a couple dozen Mini Coopers heading in the other direction. “I wonder what that’s all about,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a strange coincidence,” said my son. Beware: They could be headed in your direction. By the way, our Congressman has the name Jim Cooper and, unfortunately, some people recently confused him with another elected official from another part of the state named Cooper. So, knowing how confusing the name “Cooper” can be, I wanted to stress to everyone in Nashville that Jim Cooper is not the car named Mini Cooper. However, I do recall he owns one.

Technorati Tags: nashville

How people get to rexblog.com: Last night, I looked on a free service from statcounter.com to see what keyword searches landed people on this blog and discovered that a Google search for “pacman jones arrest record” has a post I wrote a few months ago ranked high. Which is good, because I liked what I had to say — although I’d forgotten saying it. (For those who aren’t football fans, I’ll skip why that old post has any relevance to current news.)

Technorati Tags: nashville, titans

What makes the media check their brains at the door when the story is about dead celebrities and psychos? What Jeff Jarvis said: “Anyone who has spent more than six months reporting, editing, or watching the news could have guessed that John Mark Karr was just a sicko who was looking for attention.”

I will see Jeff’s quote and raise him one: The only experience anyone needed to discern the guy was a mental case is a modicum of walking-around common sense.

Earlier this evening, I was in a drugstore and saw the sick People magazine cover that seemed to yell out the editors knew the guy was crazy, but they still were committed to a belief in the magic formula of selling magazines that was articulated by their legendary founding editor, Richard Stolley (someone I’m sure Jeff may have spent some time with a few years ago): “Young is better than old. Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. TV is better than music. Music is better than movies. Movies are better than sports. Anything is better than politics. (and, he later added) Nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”

Pathetically ironic is the sad fact that the only reason JonBenet is a celebrity is because for years before she was brutally murdered, her mother dressed her up to look like a celebrity on a magazine cover.

Nickel Creek says no more recording, touring after 2007: Nickel Creek, the innovative and influential bluegrass-folk-Americana (hard-to-niche) group has announced they will no longer be recording together and that a tour scheduled for 2007 will be their last for an “indefinite” period of time. In other words, they are breaking up, but leaving an opening for performing together in the future. The news is breaking with an article on Billboard.com and with an announcement on the Nickel Creek website.

Quote from Billboard.com:

“After seven years straight of touring and three records behind us, it’s in our best interest to suspend Nickel Creek by the end of next year,” says group member Chris Thile, noting that he and Sara Watkins have been in Nickel Creek since they were eight years old. “If we were to go in and do more writing, we might be in danger of forcing that process,” he continues. “It’s always been so natural, but lately it hasn’t been quite as natural and we’re running the risk of actually having to break up. We would rather leave it for a while, while it’s still intact and healthy. We want to tell people about it now to dispel rumors and so that our fans aren’t taken by surprise.”

Quote from NickelCreek.com:

Dearest Listener,

After seven years of extensive touring in support of three records (seventeen years as a band), we’ve decided to take a break of indefinite length at the end of 2007 to preserve the environment we’ve sought so hard to create and to pursue other interests. It has been a pleasure to write, record, and perform for you through the years and we’d like to heartily thank you for your invaluable contribution to our musical lives.

Yours,
Nickel Creek
(Sean, Sara, and Chris)

Over the past five years, I’ve mentioned Nickel Creek on this blog several times. While Nickel Creek — a brother and sister, Sean and Sara Watkins, and Chris Thile — are from southern California and their record label is in North Carolina, their “business” is one based in Nashville and what they have created here represents the best of what Nashville is and could be.

So who’s the Yoko Ono in this news? Anyone who has followed the group closely knows the over-sized talent of the individuals in the group has resulted in several independent projects. Brother and sister Sean and Sarah regularly perform in southern California as the Watkins Family Hour and Sean has released three CDs (ITMS link), the last two of which are an extreme departure from the Nickel Creek sound. Sara has an angelic voice and is a solid fiddler who, as a solo act, would instantly be among the top female bluegrass, folk artists. According to Billboard.com, “Sara Watkins plans on collaborating with other friends and groups, as well as releasing a self-produced solo album within the next six months.”

However, I’m guessing this breakup is about mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile’s desire to push the boundaries of his talent which appear to me to be without limit. Over the years, on this blog, I’ve hyperventalated with praise for Thile. (Below, I link to some flashbacks.) On my iPod/iTunes, I have a playlist with all of the tunes that I have on which he plays — he’s a in-demand studio musician in addition to his Nickel Creek and solo recordings. I’m sure that I have only a portion of his discography (I can’t find a definitive discography online) but my playlist of his performances include over six hours of music.

The announcement of their breakup corresponds with the release of a new CD by Chris Thile and a band he’s created called How to Grow a Band. (Here’s his MySpace site. Others in the band: Chris Eldridge [guitar], Greg Garrison [bass], Noam Pikelny [banjo] and Gabe Witcher [fiddle].) It’s hard to realize that Chris is just 25, as he’s been recording independently and with the two other members of Nickel Creek since he was 12 — including six solo albums. Indeed, some of the early recordings are among my favorites.

Related links:

Nickel Creek website

MySpace.com/ChrisThile

Sean Watkins’ website and MySpace/seanwatkinsmusic

+Creek”>Sugar Hill Records

Recent articles about Thile:

“Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile: His solo effort, divorce and finding bluegrass inspiration in the White Stripes” | The Coloradan.

“Nickel Creek fans shouldn’t sweat it that front man Chris Thile has yet another solo album coming out this fall. “It’s very normal for bluegrass musicians to have a lot of irons in the fire,” said Thile in a recent phone interview from Peoria, Ill. where the band was just starting another leg of its American tour. “You’re not going to find the project that’s so fulfilling that you’re not going to look around for something else to do. When you really love music it takes a lot to satisfy you.”

Nickel Creek’s Thile ‘grows’ a new band |Nashville City Paper, August 23, 2006

“Like the character in the album, Thile’s wounds may have healed, but that doesn’t mean How To Grow a Band is a one-project collaboration. Thile said Nickel Creek will be taking the fall off and he plans to throw himself entirely behind cultivating his new band.

Rexblog flashbacks:

July 10, 2002:

“How does one begin to describe (Chris Thile’s) talent? Other-worldly? Godlike? On a stage with three other titans of accoustical music, Chris Thile tranformed his mandolin into something beyond magical. Chris Thile reminds me of Pete Maravich. In the way Pistol Pete redefined what ball handling is all about, Chris Thile is in the process of changing the way the world perceives the mandolin.”

April 21, 2005:

“I’ve heard him perform with Nickel Creek in front of 10,000 people at Dancin’ in the District and at the Ryman during the taping of a PBS special, and with Mark O’Connor at the Ingram center at Vanderbilt, but I must admit, hearing him from about four feet away in a basement concert is perhaps the most incredible musical performance I’ve ever witnessed.”

Technorati Tags: banjo, bluegrass, chris thile, fiddle, mandolin, nashville, nickel creek

Photo: One year after Katrina, a house in New Orleans’ 9th Ward.
[Credit: K. Hammock, August 20, 2006.]

A year of Katrina blog posts: One year ago, at 8:45 a.m. on August 28, 2005, I made my first Katrina-related post: “New Orleans mandatory evacuation”.

As I’ve explained before, I’ve followed hurricanes on this weblog because my brothers, their families and my mother live in Mobile and my wife grew up in the Tampa Bay area and all of her family still live there. I tend to watch where those hurricane tracking maps are heading.

Katrina caused floods and major damage in Mobile, but in comparison to the damage along the Mississippi Gulf coast and in New Orleans and the rest of southeast Louisiana, Katrina’s effect on Mobile and bay area did not receive much media coverage. My family was spared any direct damage. However, a brother who is an ER doctor in Mobile worked for weeks (months) straight on patients streaming into Mobile from the affected areas. When I learned of my family’s safety, I was grateful, but I couldn’t comprehend what was taking place in New Orleans.

I did the only thing I knew I could do: start linking. A lot of those early posts were links of frustration. There were lots of people trying to set up survivor databases, but it became apparent that creating ’silos’ of missing people was not the right approach. And so, bloggers and other tech-savvy folks moved fairly rapidly to form an open-source, cooperative approach to merging together the data being collected.

I also posted whenever I saw a response by groups and individuals in my hometown, Nashvhille. I noted then that volunteers from Nashville have a 200-year-old precedent for defending New Orleans. I don’t know how much help those posts were in actually guiding people to certain resources, but I received some appreciative e-mail from some folks who found loved ones via the online efforts I pointed them to.

Last night was the first time I re-read any of those posts. Now many have broken links and dated facts. Their only likely purpose from now on is to provide me a personal and chronological recollection of my emotional reactions to the disaster. It may sound selfish — especially considering the situation but having that personal record of what I was thinking at the time is one of the most compelling reasons for why I blog. I figured out a long time ago that I could probably have more readers if I’d stick to one topic and run top-ten lists, but when I look back over those posts, I know this is the reason I blog.

Technorati Tags: katrina, nashville, nola

What is New Orleans’ future? The Sunday NY Times has a story that captures that confusing place where debates often lead.

Quote:

“At one edge of this city’s future are the extravagant visions of its boosters…At the other extreme are the gloomy predictions of the pessimists….Somewhere between these unrealistic visions lies a glimpse of the city’s real future a year after Hurricane Katrina, say many planners, demographers and others here who have been deeply involved in rebuilding.”

Other Katrina+1 links:

Storycorps: Survial Stories
NPR Weekend Saturday: “Imagining a New City in New Orleans” This is a lot like the conversations I heard in New Orleans last week
Rising Tide Conference Wiki. Related to the blogger-led conference taking place now.
Times-Picayune/Nola.com: “Katrina: One Year Later

Technorati Tags: katrina, nola

The Nashville Congressman Jim Cooper isn’t named Jerry: I took that picture back in April. It’s a shot of a friend of mine, Jim Cooper, and his son, along with my son (with the cool charcoal under his eyes) and daughter. Jim Cooper is the U.S. Congressman who represents Nashville. Friday’s Tennessean (I’m just catching up) had a story about how some people are confusing the name of Jim Cooper with the name of another elected official. Unfortunately, some people think a state senator from Chattanooga named Jerry Cooper who was indicted last week, is Jim. I’ve known and supported Jim for 24 years and he’s perhaps the squeakiest clean politician there is. I wanted to join in the clarification squad: Jim Cooper is not the indicted state senator named Jerry. Oh, by the way, Jim Cooper is also not another Jim who is running for governor and whose yard signs say just Jim.

Travelling fool: I bookmarked this “states visited” doo-dad a few weeks ago, but just got around to clicking over to it. On the left are all the states I’ve ever visited. (I’m now looking for excuses to go to Alaska, Hawaii, North & South Dakota.) On the right are states I’ve visited during the past 18 months — It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been to 24 states in the past year and a half.

Can one actually BitTorrent a ‘magazine’? While one (including me) can debate* whether or not a PDF of a magazine is “the magazine,” Dylan Stableford at FishBowl NY has discovered (again) a new service that is offering free downloads of PDFs of magazines. (However, the PDFs are limited to those who download them for “study purposes” only.) New twist: This time, the service is using BitTorrent.

*A download of music is music and a download of a video is video. But a download of a PDF of a magazine is not a download of the physical magazine. I am not commenting on the legality of what these folks are doing, merely my belief that a “digital facsimile of a magazine” or a “PDF of a magazine” is a distinct and separate medium from the magazine on paper. It’s sort of like suggesting a photo of buttermilk pie tastes the same as buttermilk pie.

I can enjoy the photo — put it in a frame and admire it all day long. Even make it into a screen saver or desktop background. But the real thing tickles a whole different set of senses when I experience it.

Update: Garrick Van Buren does an imitation of my son by easily poking a hole in my logic: a download of music is not “the real thing.” He says: “All recordings are ‘photographs of buttermilk pie.’ A pale, pale substitute for being there.” What he said.

Technorati Tags: magazines

An amazing 26 seconds on YouTube: Okay, so maybe it’s not up there with Diet Coke and Mentos clips, but below is a short video on YouTube of a rehersal of Nickel Creek’s mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile’s new band preparing for next week’s concerts in New York, Nashville and Boulder. In Nashville, the Wednesday night concert at the Belcourt is sold out but a 9:30 show has been added. Hurry. See you there.

Technorati Tags: banjo, bluegrass, chris thile, nashville, nickel+creek