Onward Through the Fog
Hey guys, some of you have reached out and offered support in the form of advice, encouragement and prayers. That’s pretty telling right there, so I just want to assure everybody that’s vested in what’s going on here that I’m going to be fine. I anticipated this coming and took appropriate measures several weeks ago to soften the edge. Suffice it to say I’m gently medicated and slightly touched.
Still, the venom comes out, and as recently as today someone very close to me insisted that I “drop her and block her”, which is a funny way of saying she doesn’t care for the actor but she can’t stop watching the train wreck since she could have obviously just dropped me herself.
Even to this, there is a bright side, and it is you. I’m really impressed at the number of people that have come out of the woods over the last few months and admitted to me in private that they struggle with bipolar, schizophrenia, and other mood disorders. Seriously nasty stuff, ma’am, no fun, and Rango’s not a fan. But at least he’s not alone. In fact we could pretty much form an orchestra, you know what I’m saying?
Rango working on the shot.
Some of you are horrified by my candor, others find it inspiring. The jury’s still out on whether or not I should have ever opened my mouth about this. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that even today disclosure has severe negative professional and social consequences, and you can never put the crazy back in the bag. But keeping my mouth shut is not my strong suit, it requires an iron muzzle or a cease & desist order on fancy letterhead (both are good). I’ll settle for “horrifyingly inspiring” and call it even.
Onward through the fog.
\m/ (-.-) \m/
CodeWars: Served
Martin awoke slowly, fading into a dream that was cold, wet and dark. Soft red light teased his vision, a distant promise of lucidity, but his eyes were swollen shut and tightly sealed. His lungs burned, scorched by water, and his mouth tasted faintly of blood.
As his senses coalesced into consciousness he became aware of his body. He was lying prone in the bathtub, arms draped over the sides providing just enough leverage to keep his mouth above the water. He tried to pull himself up but his grip was weak and his arms failed him. As he collapsed back into the tub a terrible pain lanced his left calf and he inhaled violently, sucking in the splashing water and then retching from the bloody taste. He reached down into the tub, frantically searching. When his fingers touched the handle of the box cutter he cried out from the pressure of the blade in his calf. He tugged on the metal handle then threw the knife out of the tub and onto the floor.
He was trembling. The water was tepid but he was cold, washed over with pain and fear. As the tears welled up in his eyes he realized they were crusted shut with blood and sweat. With quivering hands he ladled water and splashed it on his eyes, then rubbed them softly. Moments later he was squinting at a candle perched above the tub, casting the bathroom in a red glow. As the room came into focus so did his memory.
This was his suicide. He rolled his hands over, palms to the ceiling, and gazed at his wrists. They were both a mess, slashed and scabbed over, dripping with water and fresh blood. His left wrist was much worse than his right, with a deep, diagonal cut that spanned the width of his arm. The cut on his right wrist was a shallow gash just underneath his palm. Both of them were pulsing, throbbing with his heartbeat.
As he gazed at his arms he began to remember his last conscious moments. He was right handed, and when he had finally summoned the courage to make the final cut he slashed his left wrist. The cut was deep and bloody and had rendered his left hand shaky and weak. The site was so gruesome and the pain was so intense that his willpower had faltered. He remembered slashing at his right wrist with a feeble, uncoordinated hand, dropping the knife and feeling feint immediately. He remembered the sting of the water on his wrists and instinctively draping his arms over the sides of the tub to bleed out. He remembered the searing pain in his forearms and the promise of relief from his anguish.
As his memory recovered he came to understand how his bid for death had been denied. The weight of his body falling back into the tub had pulled against his arms, compressing them against the edge of the tub. The pressure had slowed the bleeding just enough to keep him alive but not enough to keep him awake – until now. He was still confused, betrayed by his failed plans and his sense of time.
The cutting seemed like just minutes ago but the water was too cold and the blood on his wrists was too dark for that to be the case. The Christmas candle set out for the paramedics was itself on the verge of death, indicating that he had been in the tub for almost two days. But the dead man’s switch running on his computer was scheduled to run just 8 hours after he planned to kill himself. The paramedics should have been summoned, his wife and kids should have been notified, and the emails with the explanations should have gone out to all of his friends. He should have died hours in advance of those things, and Plagus would have had to handle the rest, to answer questions from authorities about his death while simultaneously executing his will in his absence. Someone would eventually go to the house and ask questions. But right now he was alive, alone, and impossibly worse off than he was the day he had decided to end it. With that machine running his life it would be unimaginable misery, suffering until death at his whim as the world crumbled. Suicide was the option that Plagus didn’t consider when he stole his life, but surviving it was the option Martin never considered when he tried to end it.
His mind wandered to the grief and chaos of his family, and wondered if they were even alive. Would there be retaliation? In that sorrow alone he felt such crushing sadness it only confirmed he was better off dead, and he started to sob. He was now mortally wounded and too weak to finish the job, a failure second only to the horror he had unleashed on the world. From this endless wellspring of sorrow he found the resolve to do it again right this time, he convinced himself he had the will. He was lucid enough to finish the job but he was too weak to pull himself out of the tub. The knife was somewhere on the ground, and like so much of his life, just out of his reach.
Sony/BMG vs 10 Minutes to Emerald City
BMG_Rights_Management from sony bmg has levied a copyright claim against my video 10 Minutes to Emerald City because of the use of a portion of their song Aqualung, by Jethro Tull. The music in this video was captured on the public airwaves as broadcast by 103.7 The Mountain and is coincidental to the narrative just as the other ambient sounds of road noise and construction equipment. It is clearly protected under Fair Use provisions and virtually identical to the scenario described as legitimate fair use by YouTube‘s own guidance videos. Universal Studios has yet to respond, but they have not reinstated my dispute of their original claims as of this writing.
Emerald City – Title 2. Rango’s out of gas!
This video is clearly a comedy parody and makes no suggestion implied or otherwise that I am the composer or performer in this song. No reasonable person could legitimately suggest it can be construed as a replacement of the original. I will not be taking it down unless I’m served notice by BMG’s lawyers, in which case I’ll replace it with a version with a stitched up mouth (thank you Colleen O’Rourke) trying to suck a microphone while audio describes the terms of the legal battle as I look for a champion from the Electronic Freedom Foundation or similar user-rights advocate. Note the fact that YouTube and their witch-hunting bitch dog Google AdSense have barred me for compensation for life is only anecdotal and not germain to the dispute at hand, copyright law does not care if you’re a commercial interest.
Fair Use does not prevent you from getting sued, and BMG uses this fact to control and punish artists exercising their rights under the Fair Use provisions. The music industry is a failing monopoly held be a few key players and they’re lashing out at anybody within striking distance in a desperate attempt to retain their position. I’ll play this thing out note-for-note here and in the press for everybody to see, but for now I recommend you check out the video while it’s still up. Like everything else I post here, it should be presumed temporary, volatile, and moments away from going up in flames.
<rango>
Operation Rango: Somewhat Boring
Consider this: think of how many times I’ve made you laugh, entertained you with my music, my dancing, my videos, or even my writing or drawings. Multiply that by the number of people reading this…Is all of it marginal? I sure hope not because God knows I try to do better than that. Is all of it great? Certainly not. You would have me believe I’m doing better than average, but then again statistically 1/2 of it would be guaranteed to be average were it not for the vetting process that has lead you to read this. And still, it’s the encouragement from friends and fans that leads me to have hope, and something deeper inside of me that just makes it want to keep coming out of me.
Since when did art become a compulsion? Since the beginning of time, right? Since before OCD or mania or lithium? I am so fucked.
I’m at that impasse again, the one that made my mother so upset. The one where I don’t know what to do. I just spent 12 hours working on a video that I should have thrown in the garbage but somehow could not resist the allure of toying with it. Sex comes to mind, and it often does. You shouldn’t touch that. Don’t play with that. But it feels good, and at the end of the day some of you agree. There’s something good here. But at the risk of being a whore or labelled a sell out, I’ve got to figure out how to monetize it or it’s all going away. And I’ve got about one more week to figure it out.
No pressure, but if you think I’m fucking around you missed it when they came to turn off the electricity last time, the same day they shut off my fucking phone that I’m always losing (hint: I hate it and I don’t want to talk on the fucking phone). Getting notice at your job and getting foreclosed on in the same week? I’m sorry what were you saying, I wasn’t even paying attention. What’s on TV? We don’t have that? Why the fuck not? Boring? I guess you’re right.
Good night.
<itzgud2berango>
\m/ (-.-) \m/
Operation Rango: 10 Minutes to Emerald City
Rango completely loses his composure while stuck for hours in the rain and getting detoured on the highways of Seattle. With a soundtrack provided by whatever was the on the radio that day including Bruce Hornsby, David Bowie, Queen, Jethro Tull and other surprises, this episode comes with its own warning.
Emerald City – Title1
WARNING: Contains coarse language, it pretty much rains F-Bombs. Nothing suggestive, just a dude talking to the camera as if he was alone. Also this: \m/.
Wanted: Glacier Imagery
First concept art for Glacier.
And you can read more about Hobo Diaries here on WordPress:
Etherati.com
RANGO: Plagus, show these fine people the Etherati.com tree.
PLAGUS:
m3 Matthew Meadows Music
mmp Matthew Meadows Presents
rango Operation Rango
rdogg R.Dogg Media
glacier Glacier
RANGO: \m/ (-.-) \m/
PLAGUS: Aggregated affiliate responses suggest positive impressions across multiple channels including musical video profiles and real estate presentations on Youtube. And might I add a personal note, the quality of your photography affiliates is outstanding. Will you be looking for other musicians and programmers to contribute as well?
RANGO: I see how you did that.
PLAGUS: <ditto>
Doubt
Doubt, the spider.
There is a spider who lives in the well,
Her name is Doubt.
We do not need to fear her,
Unless we are thirsty.
When you draw from the well
She may bide her time below
Or rush up the sides,
A tentacled eclipse.
She may ride up on the bucket,
Or lurk on the far side, out of site.
She may hover behind you,
and grace your neck with a kiss.
There is a spider, who lives in the well,
and I am feeling somewhat thirsty.
\m/ (-.-) \m/
How a Dog Named Rango Jammed with Stuart Epps at the Smokehouse
As the press kits with my new single Smokehouse roll out to thousands of DJ’s all over the country, it occurs to me that the entire arc of this story has followed a very unlikely trajectory put in motion by the disruptive effects of MusicXRay. One of the first results I got from MusicXRay was unsolicited notification in an email that my song The Mistress was matched with producer Stuart Epps, an industry luminary. Considering that I am a 100% solo artist with no band, in fact a computer programmer and retired ballet dancer who at that time had only a few months earlier released a demo to ReverbNation, I happily submitted and publicly declared it was for the bragging rights alone (boy, did I brag too, :-D). To my surprise, Stuart really liked The Mistress and although we never took that project any further, we stayed in touch.
Last summer MusicXRay posted a link for a Cajun/Zydeco song, just man and a guitar, for a TV/Film/Sync opportunity. It was at that moment I realized I should consider composing music for the opportunities rather than trying to find opportunities for the music I already had. I’m a sloppy technician, but I can spontaneously riff pretty much endlessly, so composing on demand makes sense for me in some ways. The opportunity had a deadline 30 days out, and I proudly strapped on a guitar and ripped out my best Old Man Zydeco impression, the thematic riff you hear at the beginning of the song, thinking I could put together an old I/IV/V blues riff in short order. From there I proceeded to fail catastrophically as I realized my command of that style of music was weak at best, and formulating a song that even paid homage to players that truly pioneered and mastered that style was a task outside of my grasp.
This is the CD cover for the 2012 release Temple of Zither.
That song become my obsession for months. I carried my guitar with me everywhere. I played it in the parking garage at work, I played it at lunch. I was also pioneering a new Youtube initiative (“Operation Rango”, see elsewhere) that involved videotaping every single recording session, and recording every time I sat down to play at home. 30 days came and went but I continued to carve it out, different every take. I developed a story in my mind, a narrative based on the jam sessions I saw as a child when my dad took our family back to the mountains of West Virgina to visit his family. The thematic opening riff became a call across the mountains, answered by someone on the other side with the same idea. You declare your intent with your licks, pack your axes and your dogs and head down the mountain into the valley. You both tell your families the same thing, that you’re going there by yourself. Hours later, possibly much longer, you arrive at the smokehouse. What you find there is left as an exercise to the listener, but imagine you’re definitely not there alone.
After 139 takes I famously declared default and ripped out a dubious version with my Les Paul and too much wah-wah, a regrettable moment living on Youtube but salvaged by virtue of the video footage which lives on today in the Smokehouse video. Fail, fail, fail. Eventually my girlfriend moved out, and I bought a new Cordoba Studio to take her place, a nylon string classical guitar just like my first guitar but more \m/ (-.-) \m/. I fell in love with it and kept trying. After 380 takes I stopped in my tracks. That was a good one, rabbit. I wanted to capture some essential elements, like winding counterpoint and slow bends to reflect your trip down to the valley. I wanted to hear the articulation of the fingers on the strings and the warm overtones of the nylon strings where you would normally expect a bright steel string guitar. I wanted it to sound like it came out of the back of somebody’s closet, somewhat out of place, but easy and natural like sitting on the porch. In other words, exactly how I learned to play guitar originally as did thousands of extremely skilled dudes before me. Tall order as we stand on the shoulders of giants.z
So that was a lucky take and I was so proud of it I wanted Stuart Epps to hear it. Crazy, I know, maybe end of story, and I didn’t expect to hear back necessarily. His profile at one time declared “if you don’t blow me away, you won’t hear back for me” or something like that, which I now find laughably uncharacteristic for the man (he’s actually very approachable). I thought that might be good enough if he was listening for the same elements. I didn’t even submit it to him through MusicXRay again, we just picked up where we left off. He was so incredibly encouraging (“is that really you on guitar?”) and suggested we should do something with it, at which point it was game-on for me and I decided to take a crack at some vocals. Fresh from one of those “break-up” kind of evenings I came home and ripped out the entire vocal track on the spot, as it came to me, and sent the first and only take on to Stuart.
Music Industry Luminary Stuart Epps
He totally got it. I described it for him in similar terms as above and he got all of that essence and then brought his own ideas into play. We only went a round or two in email, and the terms of our deal were unbelievable. He brought full instrumentation and arrangement into the service offering for an outstanding price, I really couldn’t believe it. A few weeks later, a day before Christmas Eve, I get an email from him indicating it’s done. I was ecstatic. As part of the Operation Rango initiative I opened the .wav file but didn’t listen to it. Instead, I prepared a background reel, a video precisely that same length using cut scenes and guitar kata elements that I had already filmed, based on the shapes of the wave forms, that I would eventually dance in front of. Then on Christmas Eve I filled the room with fog and projected it 12 feed wide and let it rip. When I heard the first change I literally jumped out of my chair with my hands in the air. It was a surreal and completely sublime moment, because he totally got it and I felt like I had a band. Not only that, an amazing band, that I would be proud of. I listened over and over again. I danced around, I played my guitar with it, I shredded the thing to pieces with my new band. <best><christmas><ever> I had a band, and a fine one at that. He brought in a top-shelf musician named John Marter and the two of them somehow took this raw acoustic take that I gave them and transformed it into a song that strongly builds on all of the essential elements of the music and actually surpassed my expectations for the song. So much so, I had planned to hold onto Smokehouse until my album Temple of Zither was complete, sometime this summer. But after hearing it a few times I decided that the odds of having something go wrong or some plan fail to materialize were jeopardizing the chances this milestone in my life would get heard by as many people as possible. By New Year’s Day it was in iTunes, Amazon and CDBaby and it was game-on for Rango, baby.</ever></christmas></best>
Lightning strike on Rango by rocking chair.
That MusicXRay opportunity passed of course, but when circled I back around I discovered an old success story of mine on the site was looking for new Film/TV/Sync material with the exact same description. I submitted it. Both the original demo version and the final, instrumented version were immediately accepted and the conversation was closed. I’ve already heard back from dozens of stations requesting CD’s and interviews. Must tend to that, <busy>. The Smokehouse video is nearly complete. Must tend to that, too. In a very polite rejection, a MIP this evening characterized Smokehouse this way: </busy>
“I think the song has potential to be the next big HBO theme song”.
Indeed. Let’s see about that, rabbit.
<rango></rango>
Follow the Black Dog
Consider following the old black dog, he knows where to find mojo. For instance, Tim Hearn‘s back porch. Fully aglow I imagine. This is what that rascal did today when he wasn’t digging in the garbage and pretending he couldn’t speak human:
1) Pick one of your favorite songs from the artists you’ve heard here. (If you haven’t heard any or not enough to have any favorites, <shame on you>, got to remedial training at Matthew Meadows Music or go home).
2) Check your inventory. Do you own it? Not do you <have> it, do you own it? They showered you with joy/hate/blood/sweat/tears/, they may have even given it to you for free despite their frequently tragic financial position.
3) Own it. Then listen to it again and try to hear every note. Joe Satriani frequently referred to it as Having Big Ears(TM). Seriously, listening is a skill just like writing and speaking but it needs to be exercised and developed. While your freshly minted tunage is playing and delivering whatever thingy floated your boat in step 2, spend the equivalent amount of time giving it a thoughtful review on the sight you bought it from.
So what did the old dog dig up today? Kara Johnstad. You want to talk about blazing a path and living the dream? Fancy lady \m/.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085BNU9O/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img
<rango>
(please share me)
Kara Johnstad: Jazz singer, composer, actress, coach.
Rango's Dog House 