view original Originally uploaded by Napalm filled tires Billy Crystal and Robert DeNiro starred in a pair of insipid yet entertaining comedies, with Crystal portraying a psychoanalyst and DeNiro the underworld kingpin he was treating. One of the sub-plots in one of the films was the death of the famous father of Crystal’s character. Whenever he was offered condolences regarding his father’s passing, Crystal would reply, “I’m grieving; it’s a process.” I’m learning that writing is also a process, not a product, and that like grieving, it can take a long time to get over, or get it over with.…
Enjoying Our Last Five Weeks…
Our family met on Friday evening to discuss our various return options, and we decided to catch a flight out of Dunedin on Saturday, June 28. We’ll spend two days in Sydney, Australia, then head back home to Hawai‘i on June 30. June 29 is my birthday and June 30 is Marie’s, so it will be a nice last present for us before we return home and deal with all of the things that we were able to put off until our return. M?lia wanted us to leave on the 27th so that she didn’t have to perform a hula…
University of Sheffield Looking For A Lecturer
The Department of Music, University of Sheffield wishes to appoint a full-time, fixed term lecturer in ethnomusicology for the period 18 August 2008 to 18 May 2009. The programme in ethnomusicology at Sheffield is one of the largest in Britain, with three full-time lecturing staff. I visited Sheffield and met the staff their at the International Council for Traditional Music conference back in summer 2004, and seriously considered enrolling in their Ph.d. program at one point. The exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and British pound was an insurmountable obstacle.
Davey Jones Has Soul… But A Different Kind
I’m not embarassed to say that I loved the Monkees when I was in grade school (though Scott may be embarassed for me). Davey gets a lesson in rhythm from pianist Charlie Smalls:
Dunedin Notes
While we have been here for just under four months, my mind has already begun to think about making plans for our return to Hawai‘i in late-June or early-July. With the turmoil in the airline industry I don’t want to wait too long before making arrangements. I also need to talk to M?lia’s school here and make sure that everything is in place so that her classes will transfer properly to her school back home, though we know already some classes won’t. Time has certainly flown by here, but I still do have a lot of work to do on…
Circus Money Coming Soon
My daughter turns 17 next month. That means that it’s been nearly that long since Walter Becker put out a solo release. How are the two events related? Well, he had to watch her once for me when she was just a few months old while I did some work in his home studio on Maui. At the time he was working on that first release, 11 Tracks of Whack (yes, it was released in 1994 but these guys take a LONG time to record, as you may have heard). I could shoot myself for not having gotten a picture…
Here’s To You, Ronnie Drew
Irish musician Ronnie Drew is battling cancer and a host of Irish musicians decided to honour him with a song. The song “The Ballad of Ronnie Drew”, is a collaboration, written by the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, with Bono, the Edge and the former Golden Horde singer and songwriter Simon Carmody. (With a tip o’ the hat to Pat Phelan)
TwitterGrams – The New “Push”?
I’ve been following Dave Winer‘s experiments in TwitterGrams with some interest for the past week. He put a web interface on the service which allows people to post small (under 200k) MP3 files, and have them delivered as “Tweets”. Just for fun I made a short sample from Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole’s What A Wonderful World and posted it. It immediately showed up in my podcast area in iTunes, and a tweet showed up in Twitterific. It occurred to me what a great tool this could potentially be for music promotion. It’s the new “push”. Fans of a musician become their Twitter…
N? H?k? Hanohano 2007
Kenneth and I did not win any awards for Makuak?ne, but had a great time anyway. He did win Compilation Album of the Year (with several co-producers). Here are some pics from the event.
N? H?k? Pio ‘Ole Online
At the request of the HARA Board of Governors, I’ve posted the audio file for “N? H?k? Pio ‘Ole” on the HARA welcome page. The original plan was to have it played going into and coming back from commercial breaks at the N? H?k? Hanohano Awards this year, but it looks like it may not be used in that way because of how tight the schedule is. Please keep in mind that this was originally intended to be a demo, and re-recorded if it won, however, there was not enough time to do so. My deepest mahalo nui to the…