To say goodbye to Metaplace.com in style, there’s a party scheduled at noon tomorrow January 1st, probably running all the way until the lights go out at midnight. Please come on by and hang out!

I am also going to do one last, final farewell concert, after some users asked me to. It will be at 2pm Pacific (or Metaplace time) in The Stage, and I will embed it here as usual.

…means reading those crazy crazy liner notes, full of pretention and affection.

…means finding Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and Steve Martin as a wild and crazy guy.

…means wondering why my wife had so much Barry Gibb when she was a young teen. And uh, Crystal Gayle?

…means laughing over the albums that we gave each other on CD this year that suddenly we can also play on vinyl.

…means marveling over the 25 cent stickers on them, remembering being broke in college and tracking down obscure stuff in bins in used record stores.

…means blasting Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.

…means rediscovering our classical and jazz collections.

…means, unfortunately, hours and hours and hours of “ripping” the vinyl, because the romance of the record will probably only last another few hours.

Another guitar instrumental… it’s in open D, capo IV. I sorta-tabbed it, after the break.

– download “Holidays”

Read the rest of this entry »

Another month, another concert. This one is for Charity Day, another MacZ event in Metaplace. It runs from 2pm-4pm Pacific time. You can get there at this link: http://www.metaplace.com/thestage/play

Or right here, if you can see this world embed:

(event over)

Head up the stairs and through the triple doors by the meep with the bow tie.

Here’s the 2 hour and 20 minute recording of the concert I did yesterday for Halloween on Metaplace. It’s all covers, and there’s plenty of awkward silences between the songs, because you can’t hear and see anything that the audience said and did while I was playing. You only get what went up the stream. Some of my answers to text chat may seem out of context.

No download link — it’s almost 200MB. Edit: here’s a download link for the concert broken up into individual MP3 tracks, in a ZIP file. It’s around 170MB this way.

Before anyone asks, this is just me singing and on solo guitar, plus a harmonizer pedal. Most of the songs are fingerpicked, actually, but I used a flatpick on a few that asked for more of a strum. The recording setup is moderately complicated — mic and guitar into a harmonizer pedal which added some EQ and reverb and of course harmonies sometimes; then guitar further into a multi-effects pedal to add some reverb and punch. I also had a large diaphragm mic, dry (meaning, no reverb or effects at all), sitting close to add detail and some wood back into the guitar. From there, into BUTT and thence up to a Shoutcast station. BUTT did the recording locally.

I tried to make each song lead into the next narratively, and to cover a nice wide range of genres for everyone who was there. Here’s the set list, which was selected to fit the holiday: horror songs, creepy songs, songs about death and madness, prison tunes, and murder ballads and silly songs. It has a bunch of the stuff I usually do — blues, a lot of singer-songwriter material, 80s covers that it’s weird to tackle on acoustic…

Read the rest of this entry »

And it will be here:

Concert over!

Thanks to everyone who came — I had a blast! I recorded the audio stream, so I will post it up once I get a chance to peek at it in a sound editor. Off for Halloween night stuff now, though!

A collective of Metaplace users led by the intrepid MacZ have set up a huge Halloween event tomorrow. It kicks off at noon Pacific time in the world Riverbeer with costume contests, art displays, and a bridge to similar events in SL., proceeds to hayrides and world tours at 1pm, then Superbad supplies DJ music in The Lotus Room until 4pm.

And then comes the SCARY part. I’ll be doing a 2 hour live set of music selected to fit the spooky theme, just me, my guitar, and as many creepy laughs as I can muster! It runs from 4 to 6pm Pacific in The Stage, and I will have it embedded here too. I set up a special version of the venue all decorated up for Halloween.

After my set, we’ll have more DJing, in the same venue, from J-Digital.

This will be the first time I have done a formal virtual concert, and I am terrified. Come share my fear.

I actually wrote this back in June, after a walk in one of the neighborhood parks where there were, you guessed it, some baby ducks.

The recording is a little funky — something weird going on with the panning or presence in the left vs right channels.

I’ve already forgotten how to play it.

download

A friend of mine spotted a familiar name under the musical submissions. You probably know Raph Koster as the designer of Star Wars: Galaxies, the ill-fated MMO. But folks at The Sixtyone know him for his selections under “folk and instrumental”. You can listen to them here. Unfortunately, they’re pretty good, so I can’t ridicule them.

But how would Raph Koster do as a cantina dancer? | Fidgit.

I think it is hilarious that this is news (of a sort, anyway). Blogged by the estimable Tom Chick, no less!

For the record, I wouldn’t do so well as a cantina dancer. Maybe in my younger days…

Two weeks ago, I received in the mail from Amazon the latest in a long string of Peter,Paul and Mary collections I have owned. This one was the 40 Years Together disc, with remastered versions of the classic songs that I grew up knowing. With their crude stereo recording, the voices were clear in each ear on a long plane flight — not Auto-Tuned, not perfect. Some songs, like “Cruel War,” were a revelation.

I had a cassette of Ten Years Together, the best of from 1970, the year before I was born. “Lemon Tree” was sung to me as a child, and I memorized “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” as a kid as well. I saw them in concert a few times. Mary was really beautiful.

Years later, living in Jacksonville FL, I convinced some of my friends from high school to come to a PP&M concert with me. They laughed, they refused, they caved, thinking it would be ironic fun. As the songs started, I began to sing half-remembered words along with the music, and one of my friends shushed me. Repeatedly. She was getting quite embarrassed. But as the concert went on, I was not the only one singing under my breath. Eventually, Mary stopped between songs and told the audience, “Stop shushing people! This is folk music, it is meant to be sung. If you know the words, please join in!” I sang in full voice after that, and eventually so did my friends as they dimly remembered the story of Stewball the racehorse.  At the end of the show, the band stayed on stage, and we were able to walk up and greet them. My friends had tears in their eyes, pulled along by the utter sincerity and commitment that Peter, Paul and Mary had.

I remember convulsing in laughter with their version of the old lady who swallowed a fly.

I saw Peter Yarrow perform once more, at the Kerrville Folk Festival, a giant gathering of people who mostly just share music, a festival where a sign at the entrance to the ranch reads “welcome home.” He gave years to the festival, serving on its advisory board, helping new songwriters get a chance to share their voices.

Once, I was startled to see a familiar face in one of the offices at Origin. It was Peter again, visiting a teammate, the artist Micael Priest. I stuck my head in, didn’t come in to say hello. Micael said I should have.

I put the new CD on my iPod and had my daughter listen. Oh, she said, they did “Puff”? Yes, they did. And they did “If I Had A Hammer,” which I learned in grade school as a class singalong. And as she sang along to “This Land Is Your Land” and “Blowin’ In The Wind,” songs she learned in grade school herself, I thought about all the songs they did that I have not yet learned to play on guitar, songs that are old old friends.

Mary Travers is dead today. Where have all the flowers gone? Picked by young girls, every one.