November 27th, 2007 Rest in peace, Jeremy. I got a note from Bodhi yesterday. He told me that Jeremy DeVoid, Blue Marble Beat's first keyboard player, had died. Jeremy died on November 6th. Of lung cancer. He'd beaten esophageal cancer, but the cancer spread to his lungs.
I hadn't even seen Jeremy since a few weeks after the birth of my son, two and a half years ago. It was back then he'd told me he was moving to New York with his girlfriend to open a healthy food catering business. I wished him luck and shook his hand and hadn't seen him since. I didn't even know he was sick.
Jeremy was a nice guy and a very talented musician. I went poring through all my old MP3s to find a cut I could share with you to remind you how talented he was, but I don't have any recorded music from Jeremy's time in BMB. I wasn't producing the band at that time, just playing bass, so even the raw tracks exist elsewhere if they still exist at all. I can't even find rehearsal outtakes for any kind of attempt at a sonic memorial. Damn.
Jeremy was a kid! Kids shouldn't die. And kids shouldn't die of cancer. I'm angry and I'm sad, but I think I'm gonna try and be more patient with the people close to me musically, professionally and personally because lately I'm reminded of how temporary it all and we all are. Damn.
-SkiNovember 8th, 2007 Rims and Bass. Hi! It's been several weeks, I know, since the last blog entry. I've been very busy. Yeah, I know. You've heard that one before. Frequently. Ad nauseum. More about nauseum later. But it's true. I'll start with a bit on the last BMB show. Now, I'm just going by what Theo And dB have told me about it because I wasn't there. I know. Weird. My Dad had emergency surgery a couple days before our October 27th show at Slim's. Dad's eighty-six years old. His doc's weren't sure of what the surgical outcome might be so they suggested that the family gather, if you know what I mean. Dad has pulled through and is well on his way to recovery, thanks. But I spent that late October weekend in a hospital, including Saturday night as dB and Theo played Slim's. It was a smaller crowd than we usually see at Slim's. Hallowe'en weekend in downtown Raleigh sees a plethora of entertainment opportunities and the thin and everchanging audience was testimony to that abundance. dB told me the streets were filled with folks "trolling the downtown Halloweenery." Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Vivi, Chen, Michaela, Stephan, Jessica, Joe, Dez, The Masked Debators (Lucha Libre Wrestling Team), Monte Alban and Lance for partying with the band. The guys debuted our new song, Rims And Bass, to a very warm reception. It's a little different than what we've done before. dB toasts. Yes, he does. Theo described it thusly, "It was different at times, but it was completely legitimate...Rims and Bass will be a strong song. It was very well received...I actually enjoyed myself. We had nothing to lose. It reminded me of the White Collar gig when Clark was sick. We went out there and did our thing and we got a good response." Because that's what we do. We put on a show. You dig. We dig. The venues who book us dig. We also want to thank Mikey and Joe for having us back at Slim's. I can't wait till the next Slim's show. I feel like I missed out. And today I'm missing out on my day job. Hooboy. I picked up some kind of bug hanging out for three days in the hospital. I went to the doctor yesterday and I'm staying home today. I've had all the symptoms of flu but a fever, so it's not flu, but that's cold comfort. I feel like @$$. But much less so than 24 hours ago. I'm sure I'll be back at work tomorrow. So, today I've been auditioning the parts and pieces of music we recorded (geez, it's been a year ago!) at Volume Eleven. There were a few songs we did that we felt weren't up to standard and we didn't complete production on those last year. Some of those songs were simply marred by a sour note here or a bit of arhythmia there. So, I just dumped a bunch of those tracks into my computer and I've been doing some cutting and pasting today. Fix it in Post is usually an ethos I avoid. I'm a GIGO guy most times. But as I have some time for tedium today I figured why not. So I've put together a version of Serenade At Gunpoint that I'll give to the guys this evening. There are a few sections that need a solo or two and I'm hoping dB can unlock El Laboratorio Negro and put something together pianowise. If so, I'm pretty confident we can share that tune with you soon. Remember that we'll be the celebrity judging panel at Blue Horn Lounge's talent contest on Monday night, November 12th. Come hang with us in our favorite spot in Chapel Hill. Showtime's 9:30pm. -Ski
October 16th, 2007 Now, that was a party. Last Friday night BMB played Blue Horn Lounge in Chapel Hill. It was the eve of the Carolina (University of, North) versus Carolina (University of, South) football game and Franklin Street was absolutley electric. I was beginning to wonder if my vision had suddenly swithced to render in photonegative because of the preponderance of red tee shirts with Carolina in black caps. The interaction between the two opposing factions in the crowd (and I do mean crowd - Mike working the door was turning people away, the Horn was so packed) was interesting to watch. The visitors from down south are an inquisitive bunch, so here are the answers to some of the questions they shouted between songs: Will we dedicate a song to the Gamecocks?
Likely on our next visit to Columbia, but less likely so long as we feel the need to continue breathing in Chapel Hill. We like Chapel Hill and Carrboro. We want to come back very soon.Will we play some South Carolina music, like Rocky Top?
We're unlikely to play any music like Rocky Top by our very nature. I'm unsure even we could apply a psychetronic dub and soul treatment to Rocky Top. Besides, isn't Rocky Top in Tennessee?Will we let your wife come up on stage and sing a song?
Stage? What stage? I'm sitting at the bar playing my guitar. This place is thigh-to-butt packed with everyone and I do mean everyone dancing! And, no. Just no.We had a lot of fun last Friday, even more than we usually do at the Horn. It was wild, unpredictable, happy, loud, uninhibited fun. We want to thank Steve for booking us again and Marshall and Doug for successfully discouraging our dehydration. Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Vivi, Tim, Casey and Mike for partying with us. We'll be back at the Horn on Monday November 12th as the celebrity judging panel in the Blue Horn Open Talent Contest. Showtime's 9pm. Acts on the bill are Pagan Hellcats, Chris Chappell, Crushed by the Numbers and Cythera. Should be a blast. -Ski
October 6th, 2007 Quite a boost. It's a full six days since BMB played the 10th annual Carrboro Music Festival and we're still pretty high about it all. It began as a warm but overcast afternoon and Carrboro was rockin' as the sun came out. We played a 45-minute set and started out with a crowd of several hundred folks. That crowd built fast and steady as we played on the lawn of Weaver Street Market. Even more important than the crowd size, was the inarguable fact that they dug on our sound. Man, what a boost to our morale and egos that show was. We want to thank Gerry, Janet and the whole CMF10 committee for having us perform. We want to thank them very much for giving us such a great time and venue for our performance!
We played a split set, the first half was guitar tunes and the second featured keyboard songs. dB played his acoustic guitar and I left the pedal synth at home to help facilitate an easy off and on. I felt almost naked without the pedals on one or two songs. The audience didn't seem to mind. I saw one or two folks in the crowd that had only caught our show at Blue Horn Lounge and I think they were a little surprised that we could play loud!
Thanks to Marbleheads Karen, Kathryn, Evan, Alexandra, Stephanie, Steve from Blue Horn Lounge, Robert from Ben Folds 5, Liz, Adam and Lynn, Chris from Zegg, Janice, Ray, Rebecca and Matthew for a very partisan front row. And a special thanks to the sound crew for making us sound great. We had a total blast at CMF10. Can't wait for number 11.
And, if you get a free moment or two, check us out on Music Nation!
-SkiSeptember 26th, 2007 Anticipation. This is a short one, folks. I'm feeling thin, like butter spread over too much bread. So I'll take just a few short moments to make this update. We had a great time at our Velvet Lounge gig a week ago. Thanks to Jackie for booking us and most especially for booking us a return engagement. Jackie also took really good care of us all night, beering us most frequently and helping us out with a myriad technical obstacles. Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Pam, Joy, Adam and Jason for hanging with us. We can't wait to come back in November! We also look forward to this weekend's show at the 10th annual Carrboro Music Festival. We've got a prime midafternoon timeslot in the biggest and best outdoor venue in town, Weaver Street Market's lawn at 3:15pm. We won't be bringing the eyecandy for this 45 minute set, but we'll bring the music and the personality. And there are some new gigs on which we're working the angles. Great spots and fantastic nights at the beach and closer to home, but I don't want to jinx things, so more on those later. See you again, soon! -Ski
September 16th, 2007 Thanks. Just a short note to thank the intrepid souls who braved the apocalyptic weather to party with us Friday night at the Riviera in Raleigh. Thanks to Toma and Philipe for having us back. Thanks to Chico for wiping the stairs at least three times as we loaded in. Thanks to all the Marbleheads who attended. We'll see you at Velvet in a few days. -Ski
September 14th, 2007 Fringe. Last night I became aware of how utterly alone I am politically. I took the family to experience Elvis Costello performing with the NC Symphony. I was expecting Elvis's usual thoughtful lyrics that address many shades of gray. I wasn't expecting him to preach between the songs. I wasn't expecting Elvis to absolve himself by telling the audience that if we disagreed with his point of view that we had all the same rights to voice our feelings as did he. Elvis was the only one with a microphone. I dig Elvis's music and most especially the gift he has for turning a phrase. He's been one of my biggest influences for as long as I can remember. I'll go see him again, once we're no longer a country fighting an undeclared uncivil war of ultraorthodoxy. And after spending thirty-some years as a guest in a foreign country, one would expect a bit more tact from Elvis. Maybe I expected too much. We have Bozos in elected office here just like other countries have Bozos. But they're our Bozos, so unless you voted for or against those Bozos, lay off. Elvis is no Hugo Chavez, but it becomes merely a question of degree. I digress. After the third or fourth oblique reference to the war in Iraq, I was pretty confident I understood Elvis's position. I'd come to the same conclusions by thinking about the lyrics he was singing. Perhaps the horse flogging wasn't intended for me but for less astute audience members. I didn't agree with a lot of what Elvis said or implied, but I also didn't disagree with a lot of it. What I finally recognized was the pervasiveness of division in America regarding politics, as underscored by an outsider's support of a platform specific to one group claiming the mantle of the Only Real Americans. There are no gray areas anymore. Everything must be a binary choice, for or against. And all issues are inextricably intertwined so that you're either a Facist or a Traitor. You must choose one and be absolutely orthodox in your beiliefs, whichever evil you choose. That polarity is what fell upon me last night like a piano crashing to the sidewalk. I'm non-polar. I don't fit in. I don't fit in with the majority. I don't fit in with the vocal minority. I am a fringe group of one, a most elemental fringe element. I apologise for waxing political in this forum. I've said I wouldn't use it to push a personal agenda. One reason I dig playing in BMB is that between the three of us, we probably cover the entire spectrum of beliefs on all the issues, from the sublime to the ridiculous. But you won't hear us voicing these opinions between songs when we perform. We might perform for a cause in which we believe. We certainly write lyrics with political messages, but you can know when you come to our show you'll get the music with the message and the music will remain most important. I don't wanna go hear Obama or Giulliani sing. I didn't like hearing Elvis preach politics. If you want a sermon go to church. If you want a pep rally go to high school. If you want to dance come to a Blue Marble Beat show. See you at The Riv tonight. -Ski
September 12th, 2007 A blur. Much of the last couple weeks seems a blur to me. BMB's got so much going on. I lost my day gig but picked up a new job almost immediately. So my stress levels have been riding high. I'm looking forward to our Riviera gig in a couple days to help me unwind. We played Blue Horn Lounge in Chapel Hill again on Thursday August 30th. It was a great time. All the guys in the band had a blast and folks packed into the Horn to catch our show. Thanks to Stephanie, Pamela and all the other Marbleheads in attendance for starting their weekend one night early with us. Thanks to Steve and Marshall for having us back and to Doug for keeping us refreshed libationwise. A few evenings after our Blue Horn show our old friend Night Nurse Kim called me from Wilmington, NC. She asked if she could use BMB's song Love Today as the theme music for her world music radio show soon to begin airing on WHQR in Wilmington. Of course we agreed. We're pretty excited about it. WHQR is Wilmington's NPR station, so here's hoping for quick national syndication of As One Radio. We'll keep you in the know as things develop. At the Horn almost a fortnight ago we premiered some new music we've been writing. We're not usually eager to composee instrumentals, but we've imporv'd some serious grooves in the rehearsal hall of late. We've become more adept and industrious at keeping a record of our rehearsals and that work has paid off in the form of about a dozen new tunes. We chose three of those near dozen to premiere at the Horn and to showcase at the Riv on Friday this. Our writing style is evolving to become a synthesis of simultaneous composition and production. Sharing the fruits of our labors in this forum is just over the horizon but you can get a glimpse of our newer material if you come to The Riviera the night after next. We'll play Corazon Del Mar, Matanzas and Playa Azul for you. You might notice a theme in those titles, especially if you speak Spanish or are at all familiar with Cuba. Maybe I'll tell you the story someday, but for now let's dig the mystique. -Ski
August 6th, 2007 Wow. Our show at the Blue Horn Lounge in Chapel Hill last Thursday night was even more fun than I'd expected. I think we suprised a lot of people, maybe even ourselves. I don't think we've ever played with less gear than we brought to Blue Horn and I don't think anyone's ever brought more gear into Blue Horn. The eyecandy went over well. So did our acoustic jazzed up tempo'd down presentation. I was very pleased with our ability to adapt and perform. Thanks to Steve and Marshall for having us play. Thanks to Rose for keeping us well lubricated. Thanks to Marbleheads Stephanie, Alex, Ryan, Amy and Cindy for parting with us. We'll be back in a few weeks! -Ski
July 28th, 2007 Slacker. Yes, I'm a slacker. I used to write these blogs right after I'd get home from a show or the latest might be the next day. Seems like I need more time to reflect anymore, more time to put my experiences into context. We played Slim's Downtown Distillery in Raleigh a fortnight ago. We dig slim's. The management gets us. The regulars get us. I don't think we feel more at home anywhere else in Raleigh these days. Last time we were at Slim's the weather was perfect. Downtown was crowded from the Raleigh Downtown Live Romantics show and it seemed electric out on the street, a perfect night to expect a large crowd. We were on that night. The show we played felt good. The folks in the room dug on us. We dug on them. We sold CDs. We had a good time. A number of our regluar Marbleheads were there. Gotta thank Vivi, Stephanie, Dipa and Mike, Michaela, Adam from Brothers Grim, Brett of Deep South fame, Jac from the Pour House and Oliver for coming out to party with us. The next Wednesday night we kind of ditched rehearsal and drove over to Chapel Hill. dB and I ducked into Blue Horn Lounge for a few drinks. I wanted to introduce dB to Steve, the owner, and have him get the vibe of the place. We talked with Steve and several of the regulars, confirmed that we'd be able to employ our trademark eyecandy multimedia show in the Blue Horn and caught a bit of Mark Wells' show whilst we were there. I've mentioned before that I think Blue Horn is the hippest place on The Hill and I walked out of there more convinced than ever. We'll be playing Blue Horn next week. Hope to see you there! -Ski
June 13th, 2007 Raleigh, but not Raleigh. Last Saturday night, June 9th, we were transported. We played three sets at the new upstairs lounge at The Riviera Resto. The Riviera's at 125 S. Wilmington Street in our hometown of Raleigh, NC. But just walk up those stairs and sit and absorb the atmosphere and you'll swear you're no longer in Raleigh. Least that's how I felt Saturday night. I wouldn't say the vibe was otherworldly, but it was certainly other city-ly. The windows at the front of the room open out onto Wilmington Street, one flight up, making the vista urban but removed from the chaos of the newly repaved street below. The rain was pouring down just before showtime and the lights along Wilmington and Hargett Streets gave the room a surreal glow as the downpour obscured details of most everything beyond ten feet or so outside the windows. The Riviera's not in a strip mall. I heard at least five different languages being spoken at The Riviera the night we played. I think that added to the cosmopolitan atmosphere. I've only ever been to New York once and that was only for a few hours, but I got some of that from the vibe. The crowd was bigger than any we've played to in the past couple months and even more receptive than we could've hoped it to be. Alot of our friends showed up but there were also a whole lot of people we didn't know. It was the best of both worlds. So maybe I could call it biworldly. We debuted a new song Saturday night at the Riviera. It's called Shut Up and Dance. dB and I worked out some lyrics to our tune Tengo Sed, which we've been playing for a couple months now. That one really seemed to get the party started and warm up the dancefloor. We also synched our performance of Dream Deep to the video I showed you in our last blog edition. That produced the intended oohs and ahs. Thanks to our hosts at The Riviera, Toma, George, Philipe and Chico. A big BMB thanks to Marbleheads Mark, Erica, Andy from liveaudiomag.com (the guy who snapped the pic below, BTW), Dipa, Vivi, Stephanie, Marie, Ravi, Srini, Tony, Kat and John. Thanks for braving the elements and making our Riviera debut a memorable event.
We hope to be back at The Riviera soon. -Ski
June 6th, 2007 Eye Candy. Or, as dB calls it I-can-D. For those of you who've missed our recent performances, here's a demonstration of what you might expect from our multimedia show.
May 30th, 2007 Deja vu. First, let me thank those who made our most recent gig at Chubby's Lounge in Cary the enjoyable event it was. Thanks to Brandon for booking us. Thanks to Shaggy and Daniele for taking rockstar care of us. Thanks to Marbleheads Vivi, Stephanie, Anne, Vicky and Chris for partying the night away with us. Next, let me give a big shout out to the Chapel Hill Marblehead contingent. We're finally coming to see you again! And we may be packaging some of our upcoming Chapel Hill shows a bit differently than any BMB shows you've seen and heard before. A couple weeks ago, I spent an evening in Chapel Hill. I wandered around Franklin and Rosemary Streets just to reaquaint myself with the whole vibe and I liked what I saw and heard. I checked out Blend and Blue Horn Lounge and revisited He's Not Here, our old stompingground. Blend seemed like a great room to play so I introduced myself to the managers there and began a conversation that I think is about to yield a show. Mike and Adam seem like really nice guys who are really into music and I can't wait to get BMB into a crowded night at Blend! Not only is it a big room, it's a nice room. It's big, comfortable and intimate all at the same time. Sounds like an oxymoron, but the room just has a vibe of being a nice place to be. I'll keep you posted as things develop. My next stop was Blue Horn Lounge, whose size is the total antithesis of Blend's but whose vibe is equally as inviting. I met Steve, the owner of Blue Horn, and found out how into the local music scene he and his patrons are. We've booked two Blue Horn shows in August. The list of local notables you can find in Blue Horn on any given night is impressive. This place's got a real street cred reputation and I'm looking forward to being part of that. These Blue Horn shows are the ones that I mentioned packaging a bit differently. Blue Horn's one of the smaller rooms we've been in. So, we'll pull back a few notches from the balls-to-the-wall Psychetronic Dub and Soul we play in the louder places to deliver a jazzier, no less groovy, hipster kind of gig. Theo and I are prodding dB to bring his acoustic guitar to our Blue Horn shows and I think we've just about convinced him. dB's a crooner at heart, the Sammy to Theo's Dean and my Frank, so I think the idea's intrigued him. It's going to be fun playing in the Blue Horn front window with a crowded Franklin Street as the back drop to a crowded grooving room. Lastly, dear Chapel Hill Marbleheads, let me apologize for being lax in calling Mark at He's Not Here. He wasn't in (Get it? He's not here!) as late as I dropped by, so I left a promo package. I hope he remembers the great shows we had there in the days of Dread34. It was always a blast playing summer and early autumn evenings at He's Not and I hope to do one or two more before too long. Must call Mark. See you all soon at the Riviera! -Ski
May 14th 2007 In the thick of it. So I've been remiss. I'm not the blogger I used to be. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. Way back twelve days ago BMB played our fave Raleigh venue, White Collar Crime. The Crime show was a historical event, or is that an historical event? Theo got new lights and dB got the eyecandy projecting on the house projection system, so our visuals were as stunning as you've come to expect our audio to be. Woo hoo! Theo says I've been turning around too much, but I wanna see what's on that huge screen, too! dB's eye candy snippets have inspired me too create some video, too. And I'll do that when I have some time. Heh! When I have some time. I can't let my kids play in the yard for fear of losing them in the tall grass. My hair's longer than it's been in almost a year. I can't sneak in a haircut nor mow the dang yard. Time, indeed. dB's wasting no time making even more of his "i-can-d." He brought four times the amount to our show last Saturday night at The FlipSide in Clayton and, of course, I spent even more time with my back to the audience. The stuff just looks dang cool! I think our performance has ratcheted up a notch or two because of the new multimedia nature of our show now. The audience at the Crime sure seemed to dig it. Oh, yeah. The Crime show was historical for a second reason, too. Or was it historic? My vocabluary went to bed an hour ago. Our entire second set featured dB playing keys. I've been telling you for several months, it seems, that we've been writing and reworking material and we premiered a bunch of it at the Crime. dB spun the Wheel of Croon through a torch song or two, into Bob Marley's Turn Your Lights Down Low and into our new tune, Tengo Sed. We also played keyboard versions of Anthem, One Eye, Marley's Get Up Stand Up, Theoory Isaacs' Night Nurse and Tom Waits' Way Down in the Hole. You savvy television viewers might recognize that last one as the theme song to HBO's crime drama The Wire. That show's about to wrap up it's final season of production and dB's been lobbying for us to record the theme for the last season. Even if his efforts fall on deaf ears at HBO, we're digging playing our version of that song. So, yeah, our Crime show on the 2nd was a blast and it wasn't all on us. We want to thank Mike for booking us back in the room, Sean and Mike for keeping us well tended from the bar, Nicole for fabulous pre-show conversation, Stephanie for working our merch table and new Marbleheads Cece, Nonni, Chuck and Jay for partying with us. Also, thanks to Mike Morrison of Morrison Poe for dropping in to catch our show. You all gotta dig on them when you get a chance. So fastforward to last Saturday night, May 12th. We played our favorite Clayton stop, The FlipSide. The weather was ominous. Old Testament ominous. I was expecting burning hail, or at least frogs, to come pouring down from those black clouds. Ended up just water, though. That seemed enough to keep the room a little more sparsley populated than we expected, so a bigger thanks than usual goes out to all the parties involved. Thanks to Cliff and Jodi for having us back again. Thanks to Lisa, Leanne and Maggie for chasing our thirst back into Wake County. Thanks to the kitchen staff for a wonderful dinner. I had the tilapia. Blackened. Perfect! Thanks to Stephanie, again for the merch thing, and thanks to all the Marbleheads in attendance including Vivi, Dollo, Jill, Tracy, Barry, Jay and Candler. Vivi drove all the way from the beach to catch our show and that made us feel very good. It was great to see Dollo, Jill and Tracy back among the Clayton Marbleheads, too. Barry's been to as many BMB shows as I have and thanks to our new friends Jay and Candler for hanging with us on that stormy night. We added a keyboard version of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love to the second set, coming right out of the Wheel of Croon. We overheard a couple of interesting exchanges throughout the course of the evening. The first one went something like, "I'm coming back later this evening."
"You always say that but you never do."
"I will tonight. I like this band." and the second went, "Let's go in. It's okay. It's the good reggae." We'll see you again at Chubby's in Cary this Friday. Lively up yourself and don't be no drag! -Ski
April 14th, 2007 Redemption Dub. Just a quick note to thank all you folks who are digging on our new tune, Redemption Dub. We allowed a fortnight's free download of this tune and a whole lot of you grabbed a copy. Some of you also dug it enough to buy the other songs in our online catalog and we want to thank you for supporting us in this very meaningful way. The large amount of very positive feedback we received about Redemption Dub and the free downloads really made us feel like rock stars. Thanks for being our friends and thanks for your continued support. We'll see you again soon! -Ski
April 2nd, 2007 Liner Notes. The digital age has brought about the end of more than one thing I used to take for granted. Back when I was fresh out of college and interviewing for the first of many bad jobs, I could count on receiving a letter about three weeks after any given interview, a note thanking me for the time I spent on the interview but lamenting that, alas, that employer could find no place for me within the organization. Having been all too recently "between jobs" again, I spent more time interviewing for employment but never got a single example of what I came to call f*ck you letters. I was pretty convinced that I was cannon fodder, chattle even, way back when but now employers can't even extend the courtesy of saying, 'no thanks.' Maybe those letters increase the risk of lawsuits, I dunno, but since I got most of the leads for those interviews online, I'd've at least expected a f*ck you e-mail once in a while. Didn't even get one of those. On the other side of the coin, I don't have to wait in interminable lines at the NCDMV anymore. I can do most of my business with them online. So here's another bit of business I need to do and I'm going to do it online. Those of you who've bought Blue Marble Beat's CD have likely noticed we've been very frugal with the packaging. I'd like to claim it's because Blue Marble Beat is extremely environmentally conscious and the less paper we use and the more recyclable plastic we push out, the greener we make the planet. The real story is that I've just been too lazy to hassle with CD inserts, cover art and the added chore of printing them. That stuff adds to the cost our friends have to pay for the CDs and takes away from my already scarce free time. I like to believe that most folks (like I do) store their CDs in racks, trays or binders to conserve space, that other scarce commodity in modern life. Besides, I can't read the tiny print on CD inserts anymore. It was one thing when I was buying LPs. I expected liner notes, collages of band photos, overwhelming amounts of tecnhnical trivia and sponsorship adverts if not the actual lyrics to the songs on the record to be printed on the paper sleeve within the cardboard album cover. Now that LPs and album covers are museum pieces, I've noticed that liner notes have also begun to fade away. And now I must admit my own guilt for a sin of omission and do my best to make things right. So, dig: Dream Deep
Lyrics and composition by dBLove Today
Drums by Theo
Bass by Ski and dB, performed by Ski and dB
Guitar by dB
Vocals by dB
Sequencing arranged by dB, performed by Theo
Engineering and production by dB and Nate Harris
Lyrics by dB, composition by dB, Theo & SkiIn Between Days
Drums by Theo
Bass by Ski
Keys by Ski
Guitar by dB
Vocals by dB
Sequencing arranged by Ski, performed by Theo
Engineering and production by dB and Nate Harris
Lyrics and composition by Robert Smith (used by permission)Filter 9
Drums by Theo
Bass by Ski
Keys by Ski
Guitar by dB
Vocals by dB
Engineering and production by Nate Harris
Lyrics by dB and Ski, composition by Theo & SkiBabylon Dub
Drums by Theo
Bass synth by Ski
Keys by Ski
Saxophone by Clark Aflague
Guitar by dB
Vocals by dB
Sequencing arranged and performed by Theo
Engineering by Theo and Ski, production by Ski
Lyrics by Ski, composition by dB, Theo & SkiRedemption Dub
Drums by Theo
Bass by Ski
Keys by Ski
Guitar by dB
Vocals by dB
Engineering by Theo and Ski, production by Ski
Composition by dB, Theo & SkiIf that last title doesn't seem familiar to you, it's because Redemption Dub is new! You can audition this track on our listen page. For a limited time you can download it for free from there or from our MySpace page. This new tune is a bit different than some of our more recent creations. It begins with electronic percussion that builds into an applebottomed hip hop beat before diving into the deep end of lo-fi and resurfacing, almost breathless, with a soaking dubstyle reggae groove. I recommend the headphones for this one if you have unforgiving neighbors! That tune might soothe your BMB jones. It'll be a bit more than a month until our next scheduled performance. In that interim we plan to write some new music and tighten up some that's not so new. We also plan to complete the video we began shooting just before Christmas. I'm so tempted to show you the first bit, but I think it might lose it's impact if I do. So you'll have to wait on the vids. It'll be worth it. -Ski
Drums by Theo
Electronic percussion by dB
Bass synth by Ski
Keys by Ski
Guitar by Ski
Vocals by dB
Engineering and production by Ski
March 19th, 2007 So where the heck have you guys been? That's a fair question if you happen to be a regular reader of this blog. The short answer might be continuing to bust the myth that people don't dance at Slim's. This is likely the long answer... As you likely know Blue Marble Beat typifies the Weekend Warrior. We all have the dreaded day jobs. We all have significant others. Two thirds of us have families, too, so while the band tends to be high on the priority lists, it's not always atop them. But the time we have been able to devote to the band since I last blogged for you has been fruitful. If you were with us at Slim's last Saturday night, you tasted some of the sweet fruits of our labors. dB's expanded his performance to include keyboards. We played four reworked tunes and one new one at Slim's, all with dB on keys. Our set now includes keyboard versions of Get Up Stand Up, Night Nurse, Anthem and Rockfort Rock. We also debuted our new song, One Eye. The audience seemed to really like the keys. Some folks just couldn't resist tickling the ivories on their way past the stage during our breaks or after the show. One fan couldn't resist the urge while we were on stage playing. dB mentioned something about connecting a car battery to the keys, though I'm a little confused as to why, I smirk. Slim's is a fun place to play. Saturday's was a really great show. It was St. Patrick's Day and the crowd was looking to have a good time. St. Paddy's Day seems like a second New Year's Eve in Raleigh. There was a significant party vibe and the narrow streets of downtown seemed to amplify it and the cold wind seemed to blow it inside. Hard. Blue Marble Beat and a select couple hundred of our closest friends were the beneficiaries of that vibe. We rode it hard and put it up wet. Thanks to Mike and Joe at Slim's for taking good care of us and having us return for another show. Thanks to Stephanie for managing the merch table and email list. Thanks to our friends Vivi, Michaela, Dipa, Dr. Tom, Mike, Lance, Mari, Alexis and the other ladies from Davis, CA for partying with us. We've several weeks between now and our next booked show. Look for more surprises when we see you at The FlipSide in Mayl! -Ski
January 26th, 2007 Ahhhhh. It's the beginning of the weekend. It's the end of a hectic week. It was a week of ups and downs and, like most for me, the ups outweighed and outnumbered the downs. There were a lot of ups on Wednesday night. It was January 24th and BMB was at White Collar Crime in downtown Raleigh, NC. Have I ever mentioned we dig Da Crime? We dig Da Crime. And Da Crime digs us. I feel like we are a good fit for each other. The crowd likes our music and we enjoy playing it for them. There's always a good number of folks in the audience and that makes it easy for us to get our gig on early and keep it going late. Each time we play White Collar Crime I'm amazed at how many people are out late Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. It's a very diverse group of people, too. I really like to play in front of that kind of audience because I can see our music become a unifying force. Okay, maybe that's a bit arrogant, but it at least seems to perpetuate some sort of unity when all those different people are bobbing their heads, shimmying their shoulders, tapping their toes and shaking their asses to the same music, our music. There are a lot of people I want to thank for the welcome we felt Wednesday night. Thanks to Tor, the owner, for booking us and for taking some time to hang out and talk with me. Oh, and for allowing us access to the house video projection system. Thanks to Sean and Max for keeping us beered all evening. Thanks to all our MySpace friends who came out to party with us, including Lauren, Kate and Dr. Tom. Thanks to the people who bought our CDs and all the new friends we made, too. Lastly I wanna thank Stephanie and Vivi for being the great friends and loyal Marbleheads they are, for being at the good shows and the rough ones, for helping us to not take any situation nor ourselves too seriously, for selling CDs and managing our email signups. Thanks, we appreciate your help and friendship. I think all three of us in the band left White Collar Crime feeling like we'd put on a good show. I think we're a good band and those weeks when we have more than a show or two, by the end of the week, we're a really good band. There's something to be said for rehearsal, but no rehearsal is as good at honing your edge like a real performance, in my opinion. And lots of successive shows sharpen skills even further. So now we have some downtime before our next show and we have a lot of music we've been writing and back-burnering. Oh, yeah, and the video. We're gonna debut it right eventually. We couldn't get the projector and dB's laptop to talk to each other Wednesday night. I hope we can develop a lot of the new music and streamline the video delivery in time to present it all at Slim's. See you then! -Ski
January 23rd, 2007 What's the difference between growing up and growing old? I used to use the age of the current Playmate of the Month as a guage but as I've been consistently longer in the tooth than any PotM for much better than a decade and a half, it might be time for me to find a new benchmark. Cars, maybe. I used to look at cars and imagine how cool I'd look driving certain models. Now I look at cars and wonder how much gear I could pack in them. Am I growing up or growing old? If emotional maturity and selfcontrol are characteristics of a mature person, then maybe I'm not as grown up as I thought. I'm on edge right now. One of our shows has been cancelled. Ever notice I spell "cancelled" like a Brit? The show I'm talking about is the one Blue Marble Beat was to play tonight. We'd been scheduled to open for Pato Banton at Raleigh Music Hall. I've been in the music biz for 20 years and I understand that shows get cancelled. Three of our shows last year were cancelled, two by venues and one by us. There are lots of good reasons to cancel a show, but there's only one good way to cancel. You have to tell all the interested parties. That didn't happen this time. I was surfing around the Web yesterday and found myself on Pato's MySpace page, looking to see where his tour took him after tonight's show. I noticed that the Raleigh stop on the tour had evaporated from the list! So I emailed Roberto, Pato's tour promoter, and asked if all was still as planned. It wasn't. Roberto told me the venue had cancelled the show. I asked why. Roberto told me he thought it may be for legal reasons. Ugh. Like I said, shows get cancelled and I should be used to that. But I had a lot of time, effort and, I felt, personal credibility invested in this gig. And no one told me it was cancelled till I went asking. That's just not cool. I was less than pleased. I wondered why Roberto hadn't dropped me a note when he was told the show was a no go. If BMB had been the headliner, I'd've told the opening act the show was cancelled immediately after the venue had told me. But I have to figure that each thought the other would let us know. It makes sense, but since the venue had dealt with both bands directly, and had been the party to cancel the show, I have to wonder why they didn't call me, too. I know it's business and not personal, but if BMB had cancelled the show and failed to tell the venue, where do you think our reputation would be and how fast do you think it'd get there? If you've been reading this blog for more than a month you already know the story behind the way this show came about. You know how psyched I was and how personally invested I was. What a let down. So I spent last night informing the people whom I'd told about the show that it had been cancelled. We had a number of our MySpace friends coming, some from pretty far away. I went to all the online calendars I'd posted and yanked the show. I emailed a couple thousand people to tell them the gig was nixed. The print publications were already on the street, so there's not much I could do about them, but I doubt they'll be particularly hip on acting on another press release they get from me. Ugh. I'm not acting grown up and this makes me feel strangely old. And I'd been expecting this event to make me feel young. Not many things put a spring in my step like performing in front of a receptive audience. And here's something you don't usually hear a guy say. Size matters. I'd hoped for a capacity crowd. I'm glad we had a capacity crowd for a time on Saturday night. Last Saturday night, January 20th, BMB played at The FlipSide in Clayton, NC. Who knew there's a party bus navigating Clayton on Saturday nights? Well, after the passengers partied with us, we knew! We saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones. The Clayton Marblehead Contingent was well represented by Barry, Rich and Joe along with Vivi and Stephanie. Brian, B Dog, Lisa, Rosemary and Eric were also enjoying the show. Lisa works at The FlipSide, so she was part of our captive audience along with Jess, Amanda, Cliff and Jodi. They took very good care of us as they always do. Thank you, FlipSiders! Congrats to Rosemary and Eric on their impending nuptials! Saturday saw and heard a premiere of sorts for us. We played "Redemption Deferred" for the first time. It's a new song that we've been writing since summer and we've finally gotten it structured and orchestrated. The audience dug. When I say we played it I'm really talking about presenting it in a recognizeable and repeatable form. We jammed it a couple times at The Tavern, just allowing our collective consciousness to stream, and some nights it worked better than others but Saturday it was in there. We also premiered the video portion of our show. Yes, BMB's now a multimedia act. dB's been working hard for over a year producing video segments to project while we're on stage and we were able to display a bit of the eye candy (I-Can-D) during our first set at The FlipSide. We're hoping to go all night with the vids at White Collar Crime tomorrow. Wow. This blog chapter's been long and tedious. If you read it, thanks for letting me vent. I appreciate your commiseration. Now I'm going to grow up, STFU and GBTW. -Ski
January 22nd, 2007 Ugh. The Pato Banton/Blue Marble Beat show's been cancelled. More later. -Ski
January 3rd, 2007 Happy new year! It's only been a couple weeks since I broke this blog out of a single page and into sections corresponding to the years in which each chapter was written (apologies to you who read this blog on a dial-up conxn!). And I'm sitting here staring at the top of the fourth page as I type. A lot of bands, including the majority of those in which I've played, don't make it into four years. And truthfully, there've been times I wasn't sure BMB would last much longer than another week. But I think we have the right people in the band doing the right things and sharing a direction even if we have to tack the ship to make the prevailing winds carry us to port. I mentioned a while back that I used to perceive my life in a linear fashion and that I've since begun to understand it concentrically circular, instead. Last Sunday night was New Year's Eve and BMB played Mark and Erica Winston's famous NYE annual shindig. I found myself at another tangent looking back as well as forwards, towards the summit and towards the valley. The last time I'd been at a WNYE event was when Dread34 played it six years ago. Not that Mark and Erica hadn't invited me to attend each party since, but that those six years had been contemporaneous to my becoming a father and then doing so a second time. I love my wife and kids and I pick and choose the gigs we play very carefully to maximize the quality and the quantity of time I can spend with them. And this year was about time that I revisited the Winstons and rung in the new year with them. The house was at capacity much earlier than usual, as Mark told me, and the crowd was really digging on the music. Mark and Erica always have more than several bands perform their NYE parties starting early in the evening and performing till almost dawn, and sometimes beyond, on January 1st. It seemed that almost everyone there was a local musician and sometimes that can make for a tough gig. You know I don't dig open mic nights. But Mark and Erica's parties are never like that. There's not the sense that the people in the audience are just awaiting their turn on stage. There's no feeling like the audience is grading your performance. Instead it's a bunch of people who dig music digging on a bunch of people making music and that's my kind of gig. There were a load of Marbleheads in attendance: Mr. and Mrs. Winston, obviously, Vivi, Stephanie, Mo, Brian and Sean, Frankie, Shelby, Dennis, Brandon, Joel, John, Rich, Paul, Ken and Marnie and so many others. Thanks to our hosts and all their guests for partying with us. And thanks to the other acts who provided music — Silent Resonance, Viavant, Lactose Quervo and all the various subgroupings of the above who jammed the night away. We had a truly terrific time. 2006 was a good year for me personally and for the band musically. You know I pull a lot of my selfidentity from the band and right now I'm feeling pretty selfactualized. We achieved alot of goals last year. We really began to gel a unique sound and persona, Psychetronic Dub & Soul. We went a long way towards mastering the technology we use in our performances and a long way away from being mastered by it. Slaves to the Machine, we are no longer. At least until the power goes out. We booked some time in a real recording studio (Volume 11) where someone else ran the controls and let us play. Thanks, Nate! And by year's end we had a CD available for purchase from our merch page. We played some very cool shows and made lots of new friends. I think our White Collar Crime and Slim's premieres were the beginnings of some beautiful friendships. I always dig playing the Carrboro Music Festival. We had a spot in the Deep South/Budweiser Raleigh Downtown Live concert series and we got to perform in the RaleighMusicDotCom annual Christmas showcase. These shows were watershed events for us not only because of the size of the audiences but because the people in those audiences got us. They dug us actively as well as passively. Each was a moment of total grock. I'm looking forward to 2007. The first new and cool thing from 2007 is that we can now provide digital downloads of our music for those who want more instant gratification than waiting for the USPS to deliver your new BMB CD can provide. That service is less than 24 hours old as I type this missive, but so far so good. I told a couple thousand people about it last night and that news has generated a lot of interest from friends of ours who perform on a local level to some of our musical heroes and biggest influences. When was the last time you talked to Sly & Robbie? For me, it was this morning! No kidding! And we'll soon have some more music from our Volume 11 sessions on the Web. I just need a couple weeks to wear my producer's hat again. I've been concentrating on marketing and booking for the last several weeks. But that kind of marketing thing pays off. Back when we started BMB, I had the personal goal of becoming the guy that touring acts sought when they came through Raleigh. The go-to guy who could provide a set of contacts and help to make things happen was who I wanted to become. I got to have a taste of that experience a couple weeks ago. One day I came home from my day gig at a well known multinational manufacturer of computing devices ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL!") to find a voicemail waiting for me. I had to listen to it twice because I thought I must be having auditory halucinations. The promoter for Pato Banton's winter North American tour had called me. Yes, that Pato Banton. The international Reggae star who, beyond being a megahitmaker in his own right has recorded and performed with everyone from Sting to The English Beat. The Pato Banton. He had a few days in late January between some east coast shows and wanted to try and fill them up rather than rot in a hotel. Raleigh was conveniently located between the two bookings and he needed some help with local media contacts and booking a conveniently sized venue. It was the beginning of the Christmas holidays, so a good number of the people I know were already away from their usual haunts, getting their celebration on. After a few tense days of calling and emailing I was finally able to put Roberto in touch with Charles from Raleigh Music Hall and they arranged a gig for Tuesday January 23rd. So, make sure you come out and dig on Pato Banton at Raleigh Music Hall with special guests Blue Marble Beat! And there's just one more example of life's concentricity. Back in late summer of 2000 when I met Theo and we sat and listened to CDs of performers we wanted to play like, atop the stack Theo brought was Pato Banton's Never Give In. The Pato show will be among the many special shows this year. We're working on a couple double bills with some of our favorite local performers, too. Mo, let's pick things up where we left off at Mark's party. We're also looking at getting back to the beach. Last summer's fuel prices were just too high to let us do any serious visitation with our friends in Wilmington, Surf City/Topsail and Emerald Isle. We hope things will be different once the warmer weather arrives. If January is any indication of the remaining eleven months in 2007, it'll be a blast. We're booked back at The FlipSide in Clayton on the 20th, Raleigh Music Hall with Pato Banton on the 23rd and we'll return to the scene of the crime, White Collar Crime on the 24th. Wanna come along for the ride? Hmmm. Upon proofreading this blog chapter I worry that I sound like an eTheoious namedropper if not an arrogant braggart. I'm sorry. That's not what I mean to do. I'm just so dang excited! -Ski