December 17th, 2006 The Great BMB Weekend draws to a close. We had a total blast this weekend. Did you? Friday night saw and heard Blue Marble Beat playing at the annual RaleighMusicDotCom Christmas Jam. The event was held at Raleigh's Berkeley Cafe and the pictures you see on this blog edition are from that event. They were taken by Richard Cox. Wow! We looked good Friday night!
They do now.
I feel like we're really beginning to grow towards our potential as a band after this weekend's shows. We've been at least decent musicians for as long as we've been playing together, but I think we're really starting to be a band with a definable sound all our own. I want to thank all of you who've been along for the ride so far. I think it's gonna continue to get better. And even better!
Thanks to Joe and Mike and the rest of the staff for their hospitality at our Slim's debut. We hope to return in a while for more of the same. Thanks to Marbleheads Vivi, Stephanie, Michaela, Jennifer, Candice, Amanda, Lauren, LeAnne, Gray, Michael, Angela and the Very Cool Chix and all the rest of our new friends for helping make this a memorable show. We hope to see you all again soon!
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. We started selling the CD Prerelease this weekend. I'll try and have it available online on this web site soon. Just gotta find some time to write the code. We've also decided to sell digital downloads of our music, so watch for the availability of that service soon, as well!
-Ski
December 13th, 2006 So much stuff. Been very busy with the holidays this year. Family, day gig and band are kicking my ass and I have to choose between addressing a lot of issues incompletely or not addressing them at all. This blog's no different and I'm sure you're busy, too so I'll keep it sort of short. We played at The Tavern at New Hope Commons again last Friday night and had our largest crowd there to date. Thanks to Marbleheads Ian, Ashley, Stewart, Vivi and Stephanie for hanging out with us while we did what it is that we do. Thanks again to Dave for booking us and to Jack and Jesse for keeping us well lubricated. We had a blast. Just about finished with the CD Prerelease. The what? The Cd Prerelease. It's four songs that we really wanna get out to you before we finish the whole thing. It's sort of a teaser. It'll be for sale on this web site and at our shows and we'll prolly sell digital downloads on MySpace and iTunes, too. The songs will be Dream Deep, Love Today, Filter 9 and In Between Days. Soon. We're all really looking forward to the RMC Christmas bash on Friday evening and our show at Slim's Saturday night. The RMC joint at The Berk will be recorded (audio and video) for posterity. Prolly for eventual download, too. Stay tuned. -Ski
December 8th, 2006 dB delivers again! Dig Dream Deep on the Listen page. And come see us at The Tavern tonight! -Ski
November 13th, 2006 dB delivers! Not pizza. That was a past life. I'm talking about a brand new Blue Marble Beat song called Love Today. Check it out on the Listen page! -Ski
November 7th, 2006 Wow. I just can't keep up with it all. Ever have that feeling? It's been more than a month since I last sat down and typed a blog and lots has happened since. We played the Tavern @ New Hope Commons again on last Friday night, November 3rd. We had a lot of fun and managed to attract a larger audience than our previous Tavern outing. Thanks to Marbleheads Vivi, Stephanie, Marie, Tony, Ravi, Kendall, Jayme and Jay, Herb and James for coming out on a very cold night to party with BMB. Thanks to Jack for beering us and to Dave for booking us. We'll be back in a month and we're looking forward to it!
We've been recording. Remember me telling you about that? There've been some suprises to come out of the sessions. Nate at Volume Eleven's been very kind to us and we've been making some good music. You can hear some of our initial results on the listen page. Dig on both versions of Filter 9. We recorded the drums at Nate's joint but cut the rest of the tracks in The Bunker and El Laboratorio Negro to get that man-meets-machine kind of sound. We also did a totally "live" take on Filter 9 at Vol 11, but we've been prioritizing some of the other tracks a bit higher. We've some more work to do on This, Anthem and Jihaudio. As the time and funds become available, we'll complete this CD thing and share it with you.
October 5th, 2006 Updates! We've been to the studio and have begun work on nine songs. They are
- Jihaudio
- Anthem
- This
- Love Today
- Filter9
- Serenade @ Gunpoint
- Dream Deep
- Save It For Later
- Without You
October 2nd, 2006 Leaps and bounds, baby steps, two steps forward and one step back. That's how I've felt recently. Last Friday night Blue Marble Beat played to a small but very receptive audience at The Tavern @ New Hope Commons in Durham. Coming off the midweek extravaganza we had at White Collar Crime and the big stage event at Downtown Live, I just didn't feel I gave my best performance at our recent stopover at The Tavern. Can you get spoiled after just one or two amazing shows? Jack and Dave treated us royally. Did I mention The Tavern has Guinness on draught? And some of our most loyal Marbleheads came out to support us. I guess the whole rock star thing I wrote about a while back was playing with my head. Our most recent Tavern show reminded me that we're a working band in a saturated market. Some nights are ours and some belong to other performers. This one simply belonged to someone else. It's not about us. It's about the show we play and how the folks who are there dig on it. I wish we could've brought a few more folks to dig. That's all. Just means we'll try harder next time. I felt out of sorts all night as I've still not been able to collect my missing gig bag and all the power supplies and effects units for my pedal synth were therein. So Friday night I played only bass guitar. I felt a need to compensate for the missing keys, too. I think I might've played a bit louder and heavier as a result. We all had a good time, though. It was great to party with Stephanie, Vivi, James, Dwight, Delia, Jermaine and Brandon. And again, thanks to Dave for booking us back at The Tavern and to Jack for beering us all night. We really appreciate the kindness and attentiveness you all show us. We dig on you digging on us and it just becomes a big ol' fluffy mutual admiration society. As dB mentioned more than once Friday night, we plan to have a new CD upon our next trip to The Tavern in November. This week BMB is headed to Volume Eleven to do some recording. The track list isn't quite finalized yet, but I can tell you we'll be recording some of our newest material as well some of our most time tested and performance proven music, too. I'm really looking forward to it. It's been years since I recorded anything that I didn't engineer at the same time and I'm psyched about letting the art flow while leaving the science up to someone else. We'll let you know how it goes. Stay tuned! -Ski
September 25th, 2006 Duck! That's pretty much what I'm doing the rest of this week. I'm so busy with the Family, the day job and the band that things are flying by and around me faster than I can catch them. Sort of like my gig bag. Yeah, in the confusion (and I swear it happened before I even had a single beer) of striking the stage from our performance at the Carrboro Music Festival yesterday, I left my gig bag. I got an email this evening from Gerry, the festival coordinator, saying our sound guy Richard had found it. I hope the contents are intact! We played a short set to open up the CMF and the audience seemed to really dig. We had a decent-sized crowd full of familiar faces. Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Vivi, Clark and Jessica, Ken, Rick and all the rest for catching our set at the beginning of their CMF experience! Thanks to Gerry and Richard, for reasons obvious by now, to Janet, Jackie and all the other festival folks and to our hosts Cycling Specifics and The Darden Agency. Keep on feeling groovy in a .44 sort of way! -Ski
September 21st, 2006 So, how did you end your summer? We ended ours playing a show at White Collar Crime in Raleigh last night. We had a total blast. Even Theo was smiling after last night's show! The crowd at da Crime gets it. They really do. I keep writing about the way our sound is evolving and if you've not been to a recent show, I guess it doesn't really mean much. But the crowd at da Crime gets it. That's so gratifying. It's like cooking well for a bunch of people who are true gourmands. The folks in the audience really dug on our music last night. Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Seth, Chris and Kelly, Chris, Sean, Kyara, the lovely ladies who told us they dug on the Roxy Music cover we played, fernando, Tate and all our new friends for partying with us midweek! Thanks to all the staff at White Collar Crime for taking such good care of us, too! Can you believe it's the first day of Fall? It's been a couple months since I wrote that last bit in the blog, but they've been busy months for BMB. We've been busy, uh, evolving. Seriously, we've been writing and rewriting a lot of our material. We've been concentrating on tightening up some music to record and we've been very happy with the results so far. We premiered a good bit of that material last night to the afore mentioned warm reception. Marbleheads Chris and Kelly described it as a mix of "The Police's Synchronicity and The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me." Thanks, y'all! I can live there. Last night was really a proof of concept for us. We've decided on a direction for the music, an image for the band, a new website design (whaddaya think?) and, I think, a new personal vibe. Chris, the manager at WCC told me three things last night that I really appreciated. He told me that he really digs on the music. He said that we sounded like a lot more than just three people on stage and that beyond being great musicians, he really appreciated our professionalism. Wow, thanks, Chris! That means a lot to us. There are a lot of great bands in Raleigh and the surrounding area. Knowing that we're beginning to really stand out is a real boost and standing out in those areas really makes us feel like we're achieving our goals. As I type these words, I can look out my window and see the ironwoods beginning to show their Fall colors. The green is turning into gold. Seems like a metaphor well worth extending. See you at the Carrboro Music Festival in a few days! -Ski
July 23rd, 2006 Rock Stars. Have I told you recently that I really appreciate all of you who read this blog? I do. Some of you've told me in person you like to read it and some of you have told me through email. Knowing you read these screens from time to time makes me feel like a rock star. The show we played yesterday made me feel like a rock star, too. This is gonna be a long entry, so smoke 'em if you got 'em. Make yourself a cup of coffee and let the cat out. Yesterday afternoon Blue Marble Beat played the opening set at Raleigh Downtown Live. I'd love to show you some pix from the event, but it seems the shutterbugs arrived after we bowed off the stage. We played an hour of our most reggaelike material. Those of you who've been to a recent gig know how much we're trying to stretch the boundaries of the genre, developing a signature BMB sound. We played a reggaefied cover of a Neil Young song, three Bob Marley covers, a skanked up version of a Bob Dylan song and seven originals that ranged from rootsy to heavy on the dub. "Luke, you don't know the power of the Dub Side!" After I sent out email updates and MySpace event invites a few weeks ago some of you called me a fortunate canine and asked how we'd scored that gig. I'll tell you the story. A few weeks ago Theo saw a news item on the tube about Dave Rose and Deep South Entertainment. Dave was quoted talking about producing the biweekly summertime Raleigh Downtown Live shows and he said that they usually liked to open the gigs with either a bluegrass band or a reggae act. Well, we haven't claimed to be just a reggae band for some time, even though better than half of our show is identifiably reggae. We've been pushing hard to mix in some jazz, some modern dub and several other influences. Theo suggested that we contact Dave at Deep South and chat him up, maybe reminding him that we'd been in Dread34 a few years back and that we'd played the Deep South stage at Walnut Creek. DB and I agreed it couldn't hurt, though we couldn't imagine that the roster for this summer's RDL series wasn't complete. That was on a Thursday. I was home early from work the following Wednesday, combing through my email address book for Deep South contact info, when my phone rang. On the other end was Doug from Deep South. He asked if BMB could play a one-hour set of reggae music at the next RDL show. I answered in the affirmative, got some details and rang off, pondering synchronicity. "With one breath, with one flow, you will know synchronicity." Doug told me we'd come highly recommended when he called. That made me feel like a rock star. And that feeling grew, unexpectedly large, at the gig. When I pulled into the backstage loading zone on Saturday I was met by Brett, the production manager, and the first thing he said was, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Brett showed me where I could stow my gear and then he showed me to the greenroom where I met hospitality coordinator Becca. The first thing Becca asked me was, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Becca showed me to the refreshments, liquid as well as solid, and asked again if she could help me out in anyway. I thanked her and, as our load in time was swiftly approaching, celled Theo and dB to tell them where the access and greenroom were. I went back out to the street and met up with Theo and dB. We checked in with Brett and he handed us our artist identification and meal tickets. We thanked him and crossed the street to have a bite at Rum Runners. We finished lunch and headed backstage to unload our gear and there were roadies there to help out. Now if you really want to make a musician feel special, help haul gear! The sound was run by Rock Quarry Sound and their guy, Max, helped us out with every input and monitor issue we had, including doing a bit of on-the-fly audio effects during one of our songs. We played for an hour on a big stage through a big, loud, high-fidelity PA, got to jump around and be as loud and as crazy as we wanted and got paid for it. We were living the fantasy Saturday afternoon. And the audience seemed to dig on it as much as we did. We had folks groovin', dancin', and skankin' along all the while. We took a few musical chances and they all seemed to pay off from the stage. I think we've reached the point where we never play the same song the same way twice, but the vibe carries us along and the moment dictates the composition. We left the stage feeling like rock stars. After striking our gear and stowing it for the ride home Theo, dB and I walked through the crowd looking for Dave. We wanted to thank him personally for adding us to the bill, but he was offsite at the time. Thanks, Dave! We ran into lots of Marbleheads who congratulated us on a show well played. Along our journey among the audience we met a couple lovely ladies who asked us for autographs. We obliged and I noticed dB was uncharacteristically speechless. I can count the number of autographs I've signed on my fingers and still have enough free digits to lift a cigar and a bowling ball, but this had been dB's first time signing an autograph. He said, "You know, I'm gonna be insufferable for a minute!" I replied, "I'm used to it," and we had a good laugh. We felt like rock stars. So, let us thank all those folks who allowed us to live the fantasy on Saturday afternoon. Thanks to Amy, Brett, Dave, Becca, Douglas, Chip and Andy with Deep South. We really had a blast! Thanks to Marbleheads Jeff, Mary, Tasha, Rita, Jill, Alley, Rhiana, RJ, Willie and Freddie for partying with us. Special thanks to Willie for the quick backstage repairs to dB's guitar! Thanks to Max with Rock Quarry Sound for making us sound so great and to all the rest of the DTL folks, including sponsors Bud Lite, 96 Rock and News 14 Carolina. Let's do it again! -Ski
July 15th, 2006 Electrified! Last night we played three sets at The Tavern at New Hope Commons in Durham. Blue Marble Beat'd never played Durham before. It was a wonderful evening! I got to The Tavern a bit earlier than Theo and dB and had some time to have a beer, talk to the staff and to soak in the vibe of the place. I gotta say that I really dig neighborhood bars like The Tavern. The audience was multicultural, multigender and transgenerational. Seemed like a representative cross-section of Durham. And if the rest of Durham is as into our music as the audience was last night at The Tavern, we'll be spending a lot more time in Durham. Much like tonight, the weather was threatening to drop a skyload on us and anyone else who ventured out. The thunderstorms all missed us, though. The Tavern has windows across three sides of the upstairs bar where we were playing, including the corner with the stage in it. We left the blinds up and had a natural lightshow as the storms rolled past. It got pretty intense-looking outside and it distracted me more than once. We debuted several new songs last night. The audience really seemed to dig on them, even the ones we didn't quite perform as planned. The perils of live performance, you know? We embrace the tightrope. I mix metaphors. With any luck, you'll be able to see and hear bits of our Tavern show soon. Dwight from DDC Enterprises recorded our first two sets on DVD, a service he offers to all bands who play The Tavern on weekends. He also offers copies of those shows for sale to the audience. I've yet to see and hear the footage as Theo and dB have the discs, but if it's as good as I think it might be, we ought to have some here on the website soon. We want to thank Dwight for that. We also thank Dave for booking us, Jack and Whitney for beering us. Thanks to the Marbleheads in attendance including Herb and Sandy, Stephanie, Stephanie, Jayme, Tony, James and Heather. We enjoyed our evening with you and hope to see you again soon. -Ski
July 8th, 2006 It has begun! The first of several new MP3s is on the website! Audition the remixed version of Marblehead Skank. More will follow soon. A couple remixes and three new songs are in the pipeline right now. Dig! -Ski
June 18th, 2006 Happy Fathers' Day! It's been a calm and relaxing Sunday at my house. I got hugs and kisses from my kids as a wake up this morning and the family took me out to brunch in Carrboro. It's been a great weekend. BMB started the weekend at The FlipSide in Clayton on Friday night. Man, it was great to be back there. It was a debut of sorts for us. We've been busily revamping a great deal of our music. We've written some new songs and rewritten a lot of the older ones. From our opening number Friday night our show was a study in contrast to our last performance in Clayton. I think we're really becoming comfortable with the trio gig. And we're really growing to love our new sound. Blue Marble Beat: PsycheTronic Dub & Soul. What? PsycheTronic Dub & Soul. That's not too far out there, is it? You kind of get a feeling what we're about from that tagline, right? Well, if not, read the couple of paragraphs on our homepage. If I can totally beat that evolution metaphor into the topsoil, we're a lot less hirsute and tend to drag our knuckles far less than only a few weeks ago. The audience seemed to dig. It was a blast to perform for Cliff, Jodi, Amanda and Rich at The FlipSide. I dug hanging out between sets with David, Judy and Barry. They introduced us to Marlon and Nicholas, recently in from Jamaica. After our show we sat at the bar with Barry, Marlon and Nicholas as they played us some CDs of the newest reggae music from Jamaica. And here's a special shout out to Stephanie. Thanks for the wonderful compliments in your email and thanks for making the drive from Durham to hear us again! We'll be in your neck of the woods in a few weeks. We've booked a show at The Tavern at New Hope Commons. It's gonna be a hoot! -Ski
June 2nd, 2006 We've just been heads-down for the past month. We took a good hard look at our material and decided to jetison much of it. So we've been writing a lot of new stuff. We actually have been recording, but so far the new stuff hasn't been up to the standards we seek, so it hasn't appeared on the website. Yet. We've an emerging sound that we're pretty proud of. We've a strategic vision. We're working on perfecting our tactical achievement of that vision. It's an iterative process. As we perfect an idea, we record it and listen critically and almost always decide to further develop that idea. Then we record it again and listen again. We've got some new music to premiere at the FlipSide. We've also got some new ways to play some old music which we'll also unveil in Clayton. See you in a couple weeks! -Ski
April 28th, 2006 Thanks to the folks who hung out late on a Thursday night to ctach BMB at MVP's in Raleigh. It was great to perform for Marbleheads like Richard, Mark and Erica, Mo, Brian and Sean. And thanks to all our friends in Lactose Quervo for having us perform at their monthly original music and art showcase. -Ski
April 23rd, 2006 Remix. You can check out a new remix of Waiting In Babylon atop our listen page. More new (newer?) stuff soon! -Ski
April 11th, 2006 Incommunicado? No, not really. Just busy, like I told you before. What does it mean that I'm now writing about rehearsals instead of shows? I dunno, but tonight we had an especially satisfying practice session. Some stuff clicked tonight that we'd tried in the past and been unable to really make work. Call it another step toward that ideal, another stage in the evolutionary process. The Blue Marble Beat sound continues to develop. It's becoming a whole greater than the sum of its parts and I'm pretty excited about it. On a side note, just wanna give a shout out to the lovely ladies working at Sal's Birdland in Durham. Yesterday they treated The Missus and me to the best Jamaican food we'd had since Uncle Frenchy left town. Some cool new stuff will soon make its way to the listen page. Stay tuned! -Ski
March 13th, 2006 Neanderthal to Cro Magnon. I mentioned tired and I mentioned busy. But lemme tell ya, the audience reaction we keep getting makes all the busy and tired worth the effort. We played at White Collar Crime in downtown Raleigh last Wednesday night. That Wednesday night show was better attended than some of our recent Saturday night shows! I had no idea so many people partied so late on Wednesday nights! We had a great time and we wanna thank Chris for booking us. We also want to thank Stephanie, Tomàs, Lisa, Tate and all the other Marbleheads who partied with us. Hey, Tate, if you read this, email us some of those photos! That show was a turning point of sorts for Blue Marble Beat. Minutes before stage time Bodhi called me on my cellphone and he was so sick I didn't even recognize his voice. He got that same thing that's flying around town, pummelling everyone else and he just couldn't blow, so we adjusted our set list and our orchestrations to accomodate a three-piece performance. We really enjoyed the trio tightrope we were strolling along. The audience seemed to dig, too. We found our presentation a bit edgier, with a lot more space. We moved away from the longer loops in some of the songs towards the punchier phrases instead. I think we had a collective eureka moment. To use an evolutionary metaphor, perhaps Wednesday night we began to walk upright. We rose to the challenge. Good thing, too. Bodhi, his health notwithstanding, has decided to leave the band. He cites creative differences and our focus on developing the electronic aspects of the music as not fulfilling his needs. That sort of came out of left field to me, as he's been downright inspirational if not motivational in our acquisition and use of performance-enhancing gear. "'Ooray, gear!" And 'ooray, Bodhi! We'll miss you, my friend. If you just happened to be in Portland Oregon on the 19th of last month, and if by chance you had your radio tuned to Ras Aaron's Revolution Soundz show on KPSU, you heard Blue Marble Beat's All Souls Day. Here's big ups to Ras Aaron! Thanks for spinning us. We'll have some more music available for your listening and dancing pleasure soon. Stay tuned! -Ski dB adds, "shout-outs to Chico 'Neu-Romance' Scott (AKA DJ Mad Cow), April Also, Romaric, Thomas - Strangers but once. Particular gratitude to Scott, Des, Lisa, and of course, Stephanie. Their presence, friendship and support, helped to provide a cosmic catalyst helping me to start snapping out of a personal rut and performance anxiety and tentativeness. That process expanded during the course of the night, to saturate the band. The full effect of their precious kindness has yet to be felt. You know how I've always run hot and cold with going public with these very personal thangs. And I've already told them as much, personally."
February 27th, 2006 The corollary to busy must be tired. Seems the busier I get the more tired I get and the more tired I get the busier I seem to be. It's two days since we played The FlipSide in Clayton now and I'm just beginning to recover from that party. Cliff and Jodi, Amanda and Rich always make us feel at home. I saw a lot of new faces in the audience. Lots of Marbleheads were there, too! Ken and Marnie, Vivi, Cassie, Joe, Stephanie, Rich, Jessica, Bob, Bobbie, Paul, Susan, Tom and Richard came out. At one point in our first set I looked up and saw the place more packed than ever. Later in the evening the crowd thinned dramatically and the show took on the vibe of a house concert. It was cool conversing with the audience between songs and just being more laid back as the evening progressed. Thanks to all who came out. We'll see the Clayton Marblehead contingent again soon. -Ski
February 17th, 2006 Busy. Busy, busy busy! That's where, who and what we've been this month. There's life outside the band and it's been hectic for all of us. Here's a bit of what we've been working on. Our next show at The FlipSide will debut some new material. Much of it will be our take on some the-nerve songs, some lovers rock covers and a couple covers you might not expect. We're quite confident you'll dig on our versions of these tunes. We're also continuing to record and we're writing. We've been easing ourselves into some true collaborative efforts now that dB's got his sea legs. As these tunes evolve, we'll get them onto the listen page. Our sound continues to evolve. We've a bit more soul and funk to our credit, but when you hear our new material, you'll still recognize it as Blue Marble Beats! Gotta go. See you at The FlipSide next weekend! -Ski
January 10th, 2006 And another thing... Remember that whole discourse on lyrical content from a few weeks back? Here're dB's lyrics for Love Today: LOVE TODAY MY PLEASURE, MY FUTURE, MY TREASURE
AND YOUR IMMEASURABLE PATIENT MERCY
MAKIN' MY HEART AND MEDITATION WORTHY
TO SAY DRAW NEARER, JAH; JAH, HELP ME TO... LO-LO-LO-LO-LO - LOVE TODAY LESS THAN A QUESTION OF FAITH, MORE OF PLACEMENT
ABOUT THE PLACE WE ALLOCATE FOR IT TO STAY
IT QUALIFIES ME FOR A CERTAIN STATEMENT
JAH GIVE EAR WHENEVER I PRAY YOU HELP ME... LO-LO-LO-LO-LO - LOVE SOMEONE TODAY HAS NOT EVERYTHING CREATED GOT A CREATOR,
A SOURCE FOR EVERYTHING THAT THERE CAN BE?
DOES NOT ALL THAT STARTS HAVE CESSATION?
IS THERE NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU SEE? LO-LO-LO-LO-LO - LOVE JAH TODAY And dig dB's new third verse for Waiting In Babylon: STARING AT THE BECKONING SEA
REACHING POINTING LONGINGLY
EMBARK AN EPIC IMINENT JOURNEY
TAKE YOU WHERE YOU'RE BOUND TO BE We've finally got a record of that song available for download on the listen page. The Podcast's been updated, too. -Ski