Session Drummer | Studio Drummer | Touring and Worship Drummer for Hire | Dale Baker | Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, NC

Just trying to see if this works

My last entry didn't appear immediately, so I'm trying another post to see if I can get this to work properly.

Ugh.  Web Design.  Fun and Frustrating at the same time. 

Still working out the kinks...

I'm so close...I thought I was done and then my site started acting all buggy...The folks at TypePad help have been patient with me and they are so quick to respond everytime I get an error message. 

Still to fix:  Archive Index Template and my Welcome Page.  Something has messed that page up...I'm not sure what...but it's frustrating!

Anybody seen that Radiohead Concert Video online yet?

Songwriting Tool: Visual Thesaurus

I came across this the other day, and it seems like it could be a useful and creative tool for writers when they experience a block or needing a jump start for that next "hit" song.  Plug in a subject, or word, or how you are feeling and you get a number of different directions to go in.  And since the tool is visual, it's fun to see how the interface spreads out as you type in or click on different words.  Give it a try...there is a free trial, and then you can either purchase a monthly membership or pay a little more and download it to your computer.  Here is the link:  http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

What I've been Listening to: Pandora

While I'm doing some repetitive computer work here at home, I pulled up Pandora and have given it a try for the first time...pretty awesome tool.  I typed in Sigur Ros, and ended up with a really cool, diverse and funky "mix" tape of songs from bands I've not heard before.  Some friends had told me about Pandora a while back, and I think I even tried it a few years ago when I had an office job, but I'm really digging on it tonight.  I think the key was putting in the right group.  (When I did it a few years ago, I think I put in "Peaches and Herb," yeah, I know...pretty lame...).  Well here is my Pandora info, should you want to peak into what I've been listening to:

Winter Come Gently

We went to see my friends Gary and Amy Wixtrom (Amy Shreve) and their daughter while we were in Nashville and had a lovely time catching up with them and all their various projects.  Gary played me a couple of tracks from one of their newest releases, "Winter Come Gently." 

One of the songs was a new arrangement of Joy to the World.  They set the song in a minor key, which I think is awesome for Christmas songs.  I think I've always found Christmas to be a holiday filled with melancholy.  Whether it's disappointment in gifts not received or in the knowledge that as Christians we've allowed a holy day to be commercialized and fully secularized.  Whatever the case, Christmas is a holiday that is usually a difficult time for me and I find comfort in listening to songs that reflect the melancholy I feel.  Minor key songs usually reflect melancholy pretty well...so for that reason, I love Gary and Amy's arrangement of Joy to the World.

In addition to Amy's peaceful voice and celtic harp playing, the CD features John Catchings on cello and Sam Levine on whistles, recorders, and flute.  Gary produced the disc and also plays percussion, bass and guitar on it as well.

The music is peaceful and soothing and meditative.  If you get a chance check out their site, purchase a CD, or better yet, invite them to your church or school for an evening of enjoyable music.

Stuff

I found out about this from my wife, who found out about it from a friend.  It's called "The Story of Stuff."

It will only take 20 minutes of your time to watch.  It's engaging and interesting and a little disconcerting the way Al Gore's documentary was.  Here's a quote from the site:

"The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

Heady stuff, I know.  Still,  I thought you might enjoy it. Let me know what you think about it!

New Year's Eve with Radiohead

If you get a chance, and if the servers don't jam up make sure you check out Radiohead's New Year's Eve show.  According to the Associated Press:

"Radiohead will perform its new album, In Rainbows, in its entirety during a pre-taped, hour-long set that will premiere New Year's Eve on TV and the Internet."

The event will air on Current TV and Current.com starting 12 a.m. Dec. 31.

I'm sure it will be a good one, as they have a lot riding on this record and their subsequent tour in 2008.

Also The Guardian had a bit more to say about it as well:

"The "songs and other bits", as Radiohead's frontman, Thom Yorke, calls them, will be shown on the band's website as well as the UK and US satellite and cable channel Current TV."

Sources:
Newser
The Guardian
The Star

Dropping Christmas

I read this great post over at Inward/Outward the other day.  Here's a couple of quotes from the post:

The church remembers that the baby grew up and got into trouble with the authorities for living out his notion of what God’s kingdom looks like—a new social arrangement without all the old barriers and boundaries, an arrangement in which all are loved and welcomed at the banquet table.

The church remembers that the baby grew up and challenged social convention by forgiving enemies, turning the other cheek, responding to violence not with violence but with love….

I love to be reminded of stuff like this.  That Christ responded to "violence not with violence but with love..."  Oh, that I would be able to be like that.  So many times when I feel like injustice has happened, my reaction is to get angry, or upset and yes, violent!  Ugh.  I hate that about myself.  I wish that we were all more forgiving of each other's faults and inability to "measure up."  I wish that our world was more encouraging and less discouraging.  And I wish that Christians better reflected the person they have chosen to follow.  Alright...enough ranting...just some thoughts that came to mind, thanks to Inward/ Outward.

Walk Hard, Walk Bold

Yep.  I went and saw Walk Hard tonight.  I am so in love with the humor of Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan.  The acting by John C. Reilly is superb.  The humor works because everyone takes the words so seriously.  The words are funny when the actors play it straight, not in an ironic and knowing way, but totally straight, serious drama straight.  Brilliant.  And it's refreshing that all the funny parts aren't in the previews.  The scenes with the Beatles are pretty hilarious.  And the Peter Max inspired cartoon section is awesome.  Perfect movie...I could've done without the gratuitous male (and female) frontal shots...but still, what would a Judd Apatow movie be without some crass humor?  The rehab scenes are pretty funny too.  I think my favorite line was something like "the blankets saved me."  Anyway, that's about it.  A good popcorn movie, nothing serious and laugh out loud fun.  I can imagine this movie will be quoted by band members and musicians for a long time coming...

Oh, and a bit of trivia: one of my favorite songs ever is "God Said No" by Dan Bern.  I noticed in the credits that Dan wrote and co/wrote a bunch of the songs for the movie.  I thought that was pretty cool. 

Warner Music on Amazon

I noticed over at Yahoo News today that Warner will start selling their tunes on Amazon's music service.  I wonder how and if this will change the offerings they currently have on iTunes.  Sixpence and several other artists that I've worked with are either Warner Music Group artists, or are distributed via Warner's distribution network.  I still feel like iTunes is my first place to go to look for music when I need to hear a snippet or search for an artist.  I rarely buy mp3's, but when I do I usually shop at iTunes.  It will be interesting to see if Amazon starts to cut into the ubiquitousness (is that even a word?) that iTunes seems to have in my heart and mind.  Of course, the fact that I'm staring into and Apple product as I'm typing this, probably helps Apple continue to get my mp3.  Still, Amazon's Music Store feels cluttered and thrown together.  I think with their new site design, they may be able to take care of some of that clutteredness...

I hope that eventually the major record companies can figure out a way to go to a DRM free subscription model as I think that would benefit everyone ultimately...but oh the copyright and payment issues to be hammered out in order to make something like that work...I wonder if Steve Jobs will have any surprises up his sleeve (related to this) when he makes his annual MacWorld speech in January.

My Free Mac

Many of you know that I received my Mac Book for $75 this past summer.  I did it through finding a link (thank you Gavin!) at Josh Clark's site, and as I've been here in TN visiting family for the holidays, I've mentioned and bragged about the fact that my Mac only cost $75, and so have gotten quizzed on how I did it. 

My wife has enjoyed using my Macbook, and so I thought I'd see if I could get her a Mac using some of the same methods I used before.  So last night and early today I went back to Josh's site to find out if it was still possible to get a "free mac."  As it turns out, the particular method I used (via ShopFreePay and completing 12 offers from 3 different categories) is no longer available, so I looked for some other options.  On this page, Josh lists out the sites that he recommends and so I picked out the one for YourFreeiStuff and signed up. 

At first I was going to do the offer completion method that I'd done before.  This is where you get credit for completing a certain amount of offers or (in this site's case) you get points for completing offers, and once you've accumulated enough points, you get your item.  However, this time out (after looking at how many offers I'd need to complete in order to accumulate enough points (23 offers plus...), I decided to switch my account over to referral based. 

Now, I'm tasked with getting 13 referrals.  Each of those referrals need to sign up with the site using my referral code and then complete "one level A offer OR 50 points or more worth of Level B offers."   

Many of the offers are for things that you would already be interested in, like Blockbuster Video membership, NetFlix, Children's book clubs, Magazine subscriptions and the like.  So after signing up, it should be fairly easy finding an offer to complete that interests you. 

Please note:  First get an alternate email address (via hotmail or gmail or some other free email account).  It has been my experience that the account you sign up with will be spammed (usually not by the site you're signing up with, but by plenty of other sites.   By having an alternate email account, if the spam gets to be too much, you can simply delete the account.

So, do you want to help me get a free mac?  If so, click this link to sign up using my referral code! I'll keep you posted on my progress, and if you want to drop me a line letting me know you signed up, that would help me keep tabs on my progress.  Let the fun begin!

Again here is my referral code, should you want to manually type the info in:

http://www.YourFreeiStuff.com/index.php?ref=4512234

Almost There.

Whew.  I've been working on this site for awhile. And now that it's almost there, I'm realizing that I've basically created my own version of a "MySpace" page, w/ out all the junk you get on MySpace.  About a year or so ago, I gave up my MySpace account, because I thought it was a waste of time, and plus I had this blog here to contend with.  I guess for people who don't want to pay for a blog service, MySpace is a "good" option, but with all those ads, and general sliminess...I figure why continue to support them?  So here I am with my blog - specifically my home page - contains a bunch of info, so that you don't have to click on a lot of links to find out about me.  I'm pretty pleased with it, and though I don't understand why some of my content is styled the way it is (fonts and boldness) I figure it's better looking than it was.

I've to still put in a footer, and maybe a Technorati tag thingy for good measure, but for the most part I think I'm done with tweaking the design on this 'ole thing.  I'm so glad I decided to jump in and start messing with the Advanced Templates.  After messing around with these and a lot of trial and error, I feel way more comfortable digging around the innards of my Typepad site.  Thanks to TypePad for making such an easy to use system and for providing help and a knowledge base that really does help.

Merry Christmas!

I've been hard at work re-designing my blog here.  It's slowly taking shape.  As I was updating my pages, I came across this Sixpence rarity recorded back in 1995 or 1996.  Enjoy!

You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch
Artist:  Sixpence None the Richer
Produced by Matt Slocum
Engineered by Russ Long at The Carport in Nashville, TN
Vox: Leigh Nash
Guitar:  Matt Slocum
Bass:  JJ Plasencio
Mellotron Strings:  Phil Madeira
Drums and Percussion:  Dale Baker

Floratone and Influences

I'm listening to the new Bill Frisell album, Floratone, and marveling in it's simple complexity.  As I'm listening to Matt Chamberlain do what he does so well and the textures Bill and everyone else is laying down, I started to think of some of my formative influences from my college days. 

First off, I was really amazed at Dan Wojociehowski's playing the first time I saw him play, and then later fascinated at how fluid Randy Drake was, and how his left foot danced on the high-hat pedal.  Then there was Matt's playing, and alongside him - Earl Harvin.  Both magnificent and wonderful players.  Just watching them there was this poetry that you couldn't help but be captivated by.  We'd gather in Matt's practice room after drum line rehearsal and watch him read through transcriptions of various Zappa tunes and stuff he had written out.  Another formative influence was Jim White.  When he played me some of his influences and showed me where the groove was and what it meant to "lay it down," I'd never heard someone speak so passionately about playing a solid backbeat.  Other players that influenced me, were Chris Brown, and Leann Harris, with her wide ranging knowledge of percussion and styles.  And then there was that summer at Disney where Danny Gottlieb showed me what it meant to "drive" a band and play with conviction.  When I returned to school the next Fall my drum teacher could see a noticeable difference in my playing as I auditioned for one of the many schools "lab bands." 

Well, my iTunes player has moved off of Floratone and now I'm hearing Imogen Heap.  She brings up an entirely different set of memories (one of which I think was a showcase at a dark club in Vegas? where she played a few songs on piano and Sixpence played a few of our songs...)...anyway...ah memories, I thought I'd share a few with you today.

Yacht Racht

I'm a little late to the game on this one I'm afraid.  But regardless, Yacht Rock is some mighty funny stuff.  Thanks to my friend Nat for sending me a link to the first couple of episodes...I've watched about 5 of them already and wish I could remember all the hilarious lines...Here's one:

"When a friend is drowning in a sea of sadness, don't just toss him a life vest, you swim one over to him..."

Believe me it's much better to see it in person...My faves:  Hollywood Steve and Hall and Oates.  Oh and when Donald Fagen shows up in episode 3 or so...it's pretty funny.