Kenny Bloggins

I'll miss this lady...

My grandmother and best friend, Elizabeth Ann Gumbiner, born in 1925. Here's a picture taken around 1945:

We brought her home on Saturday for her 85th birthday. She let go yesterday.

Goodbye, Gramma Gum. Love you.

Once in a blue moon...

Night Night's very last show will be this Saturday, Jan. 30th at the Townhouse, as part of the Sacramento Electronica Music Festival. See the earlier entries for deets. Hope to see you there!

amazing poster by the talented Andrea Good

Press the buttons

This is starting tomorrow - it may or may not be the last Night Night show. Regardless, it's going to be awesome. Thanks to Adam Saake for coordinating the event. Hope to see you there!

Office Life

via This isn't happiness

Making it with the pants

Advice to my Son

by J. Peter Meinke

The trick is, to live your days
as if each one may be your last
(for they go fast, and young men lose their lives
in strange and unimaginable ways)
but at the same time, plan long range
(for they go slow; if you survive
the shattered windshield and the bursting shell
you will arrive
at our approximation here below
of heaven or hell).

To be specific, between the peony and the rose
plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;
beauty is nectar
and nectar, in the desert, saves –
but the stomach craves stronger sustenance
than the honied vine.
Therefore, marry a pretty girl
after seeing her mother;
show your soul to one man,
work with another;
and always serve bread with your wine.
But, son,
Always serve wine.

Tumblr = Fail.

I don't think it's gonna work.

But! I still would like to use the kennybloggins URL, so I'm-a gonna find another hosting solution before too long. Will advise.

Tumble on

So I had saved the domain kennybloggins.org a while back, with the intention of migrating this blog to a new home outside of the Deathray site. Unrelated to that pocket of procrastination, I have a Tumblr blog which I felt a little unenthusiastic about, primarily because I thought the idea diluted whatever motivation or inspiration I might have to post here.

Not that I post with any semblance of regularity, ahem.

In any case, I'm going to try to migrate this blog over to Tumblr using that custom domain name. Check it:

Kennybloggins.org

It's my understanding that one cannot simply import blog entries from other platforms into Tumblr, so this project might take a bit of brain-to-web wizardry and/or handholding. In either case, point yr internets there from now on, my friends. At least until I decide that Tumblr is just a clever euphemism for "balls". If that indeed is the case, the above link will still take you to a familiar place in your Heart 2.0™.

YOUR FRIEND,
DANA

Do you beee-LEEAVE in love, etc.?

I think it's funny how the internets have become aware of the so-called "Auto-Tune phenomenon" in recent months, primarily due to Cher, T-Pain & Kanye, I guess:

Gizmodo riffs on Auto-Tune

The three dudes above (and MANY others, from what I hears on the ol' timey radio) are using the software to create a kind of faux-vocoded sound, which has become a pretty trite pop production trick over the years. The thing that strikes me is that I can't think of another software plug-in that has ever become known by name and referenced everywhere from the New Yorker to Giz to the Washington Post. Antares (developers of Auto-Tune) even capitalized on this press saturation by introducing a stripped-down version of AT that offers none of it's subtleties, just the T-Pain robot wackiness. They basically took a scalpel and marketed it as an axe. Which is fine, if that's what yr looking for (although I can guarantee a production backlash within less than a year).

I remember Pro Tools getting lots of attention as the analog vs. digital wars were fought in the 90's, but that's a DAW, and was often referenced not as a specific instrument or tool, but rather as a method, i.e "That song sounded sooo Pro-Tooled." I wonder if other nearly-ubiquitous, but as yet nameless software plug-ins will have their fifteen minutes of fame at some point in the future. Like the abundance of beat-repeat/instant glitch plugs - they've already become a serious cliche in the electronic music world, but what happens when Kanye gets his stutter on?

Hm. Interesting stuff, at least to me. It's weird when the tools get the spotlight, as opposed to the artist, or the art - see: Photoshop.

Anyway, I fixed the blog - gave up on a Moveable Type 4 upgrade. Ain't broke, don't fix, etc.

YR FRIEND,
DANA

Do it if you feel it.

I get a virtual shit-ton of donation requests at the end of the e-year, but I got to thinking about how much I use Ye Olde Wiki and although every appeal has merits, this seemed worthy of what teeny tiny moneys I could muster. How internets of me.

XOX&HNY,
DANER